Runner blames amnesia

SEATTLE – Michael Schreck, the trail runner whose four-day disappearance prompted a massive search, and his wife attempted to quell skeptics of his story in two pieces of correspondence released Friday, saying Schreck suffered amnesia.

“I did not do this on purpose and was not trying not to be found,” Schreck, 47, said in a letter to the King County Sheriff’s Office that the office said was sent May 27.

“Please do not feel that your efforts were wasted. I was unconscious or in a state of amnesia.”

The office released Schreck’s letter Friday, along with a separate May 24 e-mail to searchers from his wife, Emily.

In the e-mail, Emily Schreck said she wants to return with searchers to Squak Mountain, where her husband said he spent three nights, “to clear my husband’s name from all the dreadful speculation that is in the blogs etc.”

But Sgt. John Urquhart said the agency declined to take her there and is not investigating Schreck’s disappearance.

The Schrecks also sent a $1,000 check to help cover the cost of the search, and possibly for others, a gesture Urquhart said is “not uncommon” among subjects of a search.

The cost of the search was negligible, he said.

Emily Schreck also said in her e-mail that her husband had seen a neurologist, had an MRI and received a diagnosis of amnesia the day after his return. The e-mail did not name the doctors.

Amnesia, or memory impairment, is “basically a symptom a person presents you with,” said Dr. Tim Scearce, a neurologist with Group Health, and an MRI is most often used to rule out causes such as tumors.

Amnesia often occurs as a result of a head injury, and the victim may not remember what precipitated the injury.

Scearce also said it’s possible to sustain a concussion without bumps or bruises, and that there is no way to prove or disprove a patient’s claim of amnesia.

Schreck was reported missing May 18 after telling his wife he was going for a run in Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park.

His SUV was discovered at the park’s Red Town Trailhead, but searchers couldn’t find him.

He came home around 11 p.m. May 21. His family said he had fallen into a ravine on neighboring Squak Mountain, blacked out, spent three cold, wet nights in the woods, and then walked home after finally regaining consciousness. He required no medical attention.

Emily Schreck, contacted at home, declined to comment further. She said her husband is trying to recover and isn’t talking to the media. In his letter, Michael Schreck, a pharmaceutical-company salesman, provided more details about his story than his family first gave.

He said he had been “extremely sleep-deprived for two or three weeks” when he went running, and was suffering from job-related stress.

In the letter, he names the trails he took to get from Cougar to Squak Mountain’s East Side Trail.

“This is where I can no longer remember anything,” Schreck wrote, but he recalled at some point rolling under a log, covering himself with leaves and being in a fetal position.

When he came to on May 21, Schreck wrote, he scrambled 30 or 40 feet up the hill to the East Side Trail.