Hunter finds woman’s body

A weeklong comprehensive search for a missing Spokane woman came to an end Saturday.

A body matching the description of 26-year-old Amy Wheelock was found about 4:30 p.m. by a hunter, said Spokane County Sheriff’s Sgt. Chris Kehl.

No foul play is suspected, Kehl said. An autopsy likely will be performed Monday. The body was found at the edge of woods northeast of U.S. Highway 395 and Wild Rose Road.

“There was a very extensive effort to find her, and we were too late,” said her father, Robert Wheelock, who was on scene late Saturday.

Her family organized early search efforts, even setting up headquarters at a Subway in Deer Park, where her mother, Meloney Hall, said the family would be posted every night until her daughter was found. Her father urged people who lived along Highway 395 to walk their properties.

Wheelock had been missing since she left her apartment in the 300 block of East Wedgewood Avenue the night of Sept. 22 after telling her roommate that she was going for a walk.

She left behind her car, purse and cell phone, and missed church, a doctor’s appointment and work.

Robert Wheelock had been in contact with police since Sept. 23, but officials said they didn’t have enough information to start searching until Thursday. That day, a helicopter, dogs, motorcycle officers and nearly 40 volunteers combed areas around Dragoon Creek State Park, which is about a mile from where the body was found.

Police had received reports of someone fitting her description walking north on Division Street near the Northpointe Plaza shopping center, near the Dragoon Creek Campground and on Deer Park-Milan Road.

Amy Wheelock, a former member of the U.S. Air Force, was a volunteer in a lab at Sacred Heart Medical Center.

She moved to Spokane in 2002 to be closer to her father, a retired police sergeant who lives in Coeur d’Alene.

Wheelock, who was diagnosed as bipolar in 2002, had been withdrawn from her normal activities in the week before she disappeared, friends and family said. But she had never disappeared like this, they said.