Children find missing dad six days after car wreck

David Lavau's children drove slowly along the perilously curved mountain road, stopping to peer over the treacherous drop-offs and call out for their father, missing for six days. Then, finally, a faint cry: "Help, help." The voice from the wilderness not only let Lavau's children find him, it may have brought closure to another family and another missing persons case. Close to a week after his car plunged 60 metres into a ravine, Lavau, 68, was rescued on Thursday by his three adult children, who took matters into their own hands and searched a highway between their father's home in northern Los Angeles County and Ventura County, where a detective told them Lavau's bank and mobile phone calls had placed him, sheriff's spokesman Captain Mike Parker said. And near him they found a body in another car that belonged to an 88-year-old man reported missing 10 days earlier. As Lavau lay injured in the woods next to his wrecked car in the rugged section of the Angeles National Forest, he survived by eating bugs and leaves and drinking creek water, a doctor said. His family told the Los Angeles Times that Lavau expected to die, and scrawled a farewell note on his dusty trunk: "I love my kids. Dead man was not my fault. Love, Dad."