By Kathleen Richards
Photos courtesy of the Korea Times
When news broke on Dec. 1 that a San Francisco family of four had not returned from their road trip to the Pacific Northwest, few would have assumed a tragic ending. After all, just one day earlier, another Bay Area couple missing in the Santa Cruz Mountains for five days had been found alive. Yet as the days passed and James Kim and his family — wife Kati and daughters Penelope, age 4, and Sabine, 7 months — had still not been found, local news reports became more urgent, message boards and blogs buzzed with the news, and across the country, people became emotionally involved in the desperate hunt for the Kims.
The story wasn’t just a case of missing persons. Many in San Francisco knew the couple as the owners of two boutiques in the city. James, 35, was also a senior editor for CNET, reviewing technology products in podcasts for the San Francisco Chronicle, and a former on-camera personality for TechTV. Those who didn’t know the family quickly felt connected as photos accompanying news reports showed a young, happy and loving family — one that could have been anybody’s.
The ordeal started when the Kims were returning home from spending Thanksgiving in Seattle with James’ aunt and uncle. But while driving to the coast over mountains in Oregon, they ended up on the rarely traveled and treacherous Bear Camp Road, and became snowed in. For several days, they ran the heater of their car and burned their tires to stay warm. They survived on snacks, and Kati breastfed the children. On Saturday morning, James left to look for help. A private helicopter pilot spotted Kati and the children on Monday, nine days after they got lost. The hunt for James intensified, but a couple days later on Wednesday, Dec. 6, his body was found. After climbing in freezing temperatures over rough terrain for 10 miles, James succumbed to hypothermia.
The search for the Kims was headline news in the Bay Area. Dozens of articles and news segments gave a blow-by-blow account, and people responded. At one point, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Website received 2 million reader hits in 24 hours. Internet message boards and listservs also began spreading the word. An e-mail from one of the Kims’ employees circulated, begging for any information about their disappearance. “This is so sad. I hope they are found healthy and alive,” wrote one subscriber of a Yahoo e-mail list on local music. When James’ body was found, the story was picked up by national news outlets, including the New York Times, National Public Radio, People magazine and CNN, which devoted a whole hour to James. MSNBC.com received 1 million page views, and NBC’s local affiliate, NBC11, received a 92 percent increase in page views on its Web site, according to the Chronicle.
Both those who knew James and those who didn’t considered him a hero, and reacted with grief to his death. Josephine County Undersheriff Brian Anderson, who was involved in the search and rescue, called James’ efforts “superhuman,” and said he was “crushed.” All over the Web, people conveyed how the story had touched them. “I feel a loss, an emptiness, a sadness for that horrible, horrible death,” wrote one user, “kari,” on Wired.com.
“This story has affected me so deeply and I am trying to understand why,” wrote “Ruby38” on a site CNET created to let readers share their thoughts. “I believe it starts with James face, a look of a truly caring and gentle soul, not often seen.”
Even news outlets started to cover why the story struck such a chord with complete strangers. “Seeing James’ picture all over the news was like looking at myself,” explained Chronicle reader Percy Chow, of Dublin, Calif. “His age, his wife, his kids — they were all mirror images of my own life.”
“I think it was definitely a story that caught everyone’s interest and hope because everyone wanted him to be found alive,” said Ellen Lee, a technology reporter for the Chronicle and co-president of the Bay Area chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association. “It was one of those stories that catches you.” While Lee didn’t know James personally and said he wasn’t a member of the journalists’ association, members of the chapter’s board of directors donated their own money to the family because “we felt compelled to do something.”
Though some criticized the media for labeling James heroic, the portrayal of a strong, loving Asian American father figure is not often seen in the mainstream media. Just two months earlier, a series of articles in the Chronicle about a trafficked Korean prostitute prompted members of the Bay Area Korean American community to write letters of protest and organize a media symposium on covering Koreans and Korean culture.
“In the past, Korean American fathers have gotten on the cover of U.S. newspapers for killing their kids and wife,” wrote Grace Yoo, assistant professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, in an e-mail. “He wasn’t depicted in a one-dimensional stereotype of an Asian male.”
In James’ case, humanity appeared to trump ethnicity. “I think the story … transcended race and ethnicity,” said Lee. “It was about a Bay Area family that was lost. The fact that James Kim happened to be Korean American … he was a local figure and a father. That was more important.”
