On January 18th, about a 50-minute drive south of San Francisco, 12-year-old Arunay Pruthi and his family were at Cowell Ranch State Beach in Half Moon Bay.
Cowell Ranch State Beach is a gorgeous public beach that has a bluff and trail that you can hike along to get to the beach.
It’s home to harbor seals from February through March, and it’s not as well-traveled as some other beaches in the area.
Arunay was with his dad and his 8-year-old brother on the beach when suddenly a wave crashed into the sand and ripped all three of them out into the water.
Though Arunay’s dad and brother managed to get back onto the beach, Arunay was not so lucky. He was carried right out into the ocean.
Facebook; pictured above is Arunay
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
A GoFundMe page created to raise money to search for Arunay reads, “Arunay Pruthi had been sitting on Cowell Ranch State Beach in Half Moon Bay with his father and 8-year-old brother when a rogue wave swept them into the ocean at 3:45 p.m on Monday, January 18th, 2021, and while Arunay’s dad Tarun and brother made it back to the shore, Arunay was swept out to the ocean.”
It’s now been exactly 2 weeks since Arunay was tragically swept away, and while the Coast Guard has stopped searching for the young boy, many have not given up hope that he will be found.
Tons of volunteers are still out looking for Arunay, with people walking the local beaches, piloting planes, flying drones, and driving jetskis or boats through all of the areas he could possibly be in.
According to the Facebook page set up to find Arunay, his family is offering a $50,000 reward “for locating and positively identifying Arunay.”
The page is also detailing all of the search efforts, one of which involved a teddy bear being dropped where Arunay was swept away to see potential places he could have ended up traveling to.
“Our amazing search volunteers decided to run an experiment today, to track how an object would travel if was in water near where Arunay was last seen,” a post on the Facebook page explains.
“We took a large teddy bear, and attached a SPOT (satellite tracking) beacon to track it.”
“We dropped the Bear a few times to track its movement. Today it ended up a bit north. The person who found it on a beach volunteered to keep a lookout on the two mile stretch where he walks his dogs daily.”
If you are local to Cowell Ranch State Beach, you can reach out to the Facebook page named Search for Arunay Pruthi here to volunteer with the search efforts.
Facebook; pictured above is the bear that was used to try to figure out where Arunay could be
