Even Online, Missing Hiker Can't Be Found -- Burien Woman's Friend Vanished In Turkey

Somewhere in Turkey - a country somewhat larger than Texas, with occasional anti-tourist outbursts in its southeastern region - is Donald George Ziegler.

The 23-year-old political-science graduate was backpacking, on the cheap, on his own, when he disappeared without a trace in mid-September. His mother has tried conventional means of finding him, alerting the State Department in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Embassy in Ankara and the U.S. consulate in Adana, Turkey.

A close friend, a recent Seattle University graduate, looked for help unconventionally, through the Internet.

From her Burien apartment, Becki Bump flagged Internet Usenet newsgroups - including rec.climb ing, alt.culture.turkish, misc. disasters and alt.missingkids - in which computer users electronically exchange ideas and stories about those specific topics.

The detailed message Bump deposited into these groups included a physical description, where Ziegler was last, the bright-aqua tent he had and the large green backpack he carried.

Bump's Internet search illustrates one of the novel ways people are using the technology as electronic communications, and their knowledge of it, grow more sophisticated.

Bump had hiked with Ziegler, a New Jersey native, until late August. Her fear is that he died while heading to Istanbul during an earthquake early in October.

But it was her hope that Ziegler is still alive - perhaps, cared for by nomadic people - that motivated her flurry of computer messages. Bump, 28, went so far as to send an e-mail message to President Clinton.

"There's an automatic return. . . . It said, `The president gets so much e-mail he doesn't have time to read it,' " Bump recalled.

Online, Bump did find the man who wrote the guidebook she and Ziegler used when they hiked in Turkey.

The author, Tom Brosnahan, said that although missing-persons computer postings are fairly novel now, he expects they'll be de rigueur in the future.

"We can't even conceive of some of the ways (the Internet is) going to be organized," said the Massachusetts-based travel writer.

"But you can bet there will be some Usenet groups for missing persons . . . or the groups that deal with travel destinations will become so well attended and so elaborate there might even be a subsection" for missing people in a region as small as Antalya province on Turkey's coast, he said.

His conviction stems from seeing a prompt reply to someone who had posted a message about the difficulty of logging on to CompuServe in Almaty, Kazakstan. The response came from the same city as the question.

Bump says she has received 30 computer responses, including some from Turkey.

Ziegler's mother, Harriet, who lives in New Jersey, had another friend post messages to the Net as well.

She heard from a Georgetown professor with friends in Turkey and a Harvard woman, fluent in Turkish, who offered to translate.

Most of the replies Bump received were supportive and empathic. Many offered tips. None were from people who had spotted Don Ziegler. One was slightly snide, saying she and Ziegler's mother were not making the most effective use of the Internet.

"Valis" suggested they construct a World Wide Web site with Ziegler's photos and recorded snippets of his voice.

Contacted by e-mail, Valis declined further comment. "There is really nothing intriguing about making up a Web site for this purpose. . . . It's simply a matter of a technology finding its most useful applications," Valis replied.

For all the high-tech computer messaging, the breakdown in Ziegler's case appears to stem from a lack of more basic communication. No one but he knew which direction he was headed.

Bump feels strongly he was going northbound, through the mountains.

"When I left him, that's what he fully intended to do," she said.

On Sept. 9, Ziegler made the last of his regular calls to his mother, this time from the coastal town of Kas.

On Sept. 15, he cashed two $50 travelers checks in Kumluca. Then, a day later, a postcard he wrote was postmarked in Kemer-Antalya, a resort Brosnahan refers to as Turkey's answer to Cancun, though not so vast.

His last card mentioned a calcium-rich mineral that flows off the hillside, forming pools in which people bathed.

He also wrote of nearby ruins of the Greek city, Aphrodisias, and the temple where people "received visions" from gas seeping from the Earth.

Brosnahan said a national park lies behind Kemer, "beautiful, beautiful" and beckoning like a sparkling jewel within Ziegler's grasp.

But he also could have followed his interest in historic sites and continued along the coastline, finding ancient Greek and Roman ruins as densely packed as stars on a cold, clear night.

"He writes a good postcard," his mother said. "He tells what he had done. He does not say what he was planning to do."

But it is clear to her that something is very, very wrong. Her son missed his Oct. 3 flight from Vienna and an Oct. 6 flight out of London.

Days before his flight, a quake rocked the market town of Dinar, leveling most buildings and killing about 100 people. A straight path to Istanbul would have put him within ripple range of the quake's aftershocks.

After a tepid response from the U.S. government, Harriet Ziegler hired a private detective to fly to Turkey. She also consulted two psychics.

Bump said the family got minimal help from the State Department until Nov. 25, when Ziegler's Turkish visa expired.

"They were just adamant in their conviction he would pop up miraculously, so they did nothing," Bump said. "Absolutely nothing."

A State Department spokeswoman, who requested anonymity, said an agency official would have visited hospitals, youth hostels, hotels and would have scanned police and immigration records looking for Ziegler.

"Unfortunately," she said, "we haven't had any positive information - in the sense that anybody has been able to verify his entrance or exit from a variety of places. We have blanketed our posts from Bucharest (Romania), Ankara, Athens, Nicosia (Cyprus), Istanbul, Sofia (Bulgaria), Damascus, Tel Aviv, Amman (Jordan) and Cairo."