(Fairbanks, Ak.) Searches are being planned to try to locate the remains of Steve Keel of Tennessee, who went missing last August during a caribou hunt on the North Slope.
Keel was last seen August 27, 2022, in an area about 3 to 4 miles off Dalton Highway milepost 336, south of Deadhorse. That’s where the 61-year-old former Marine set out to retrieve a backpack about half a mile from where he and a hunting partner were camped.
Chet Showalter of Palmer has been involved in efforts to find Keel since shortly after he went missing. The North Slope trucker and avid hiker does not know Keel, but says through searching, he’s developed a connection with him.
“After sleeping in his tent and being out there walking in his tracks, I felt like he was a brother. I mean I felt close to him.”
Official, volunteer and family search efforts for Keel were suspended less than a month after he went missing as winter closed in on the North Slope, but Showalter says he’s kept looking, and has focused in on an area where last fall he found boot prints and 2 antlers arranged like an arrow.
“I’ve gone about delineating a search area based on the direction they were pointing of probably 2 square miles, so that’s the primary area that needs to be searched, that never was searched in detail.”
Showalter believes Keel may have suffered a fall or a medical emergency and or succumbed to hypothermia within a day of going missing. Now with the snow mostly melted, Showalter is trying to bring in a trained cadaver search dog to look for Keel’s remains.
“So where I’m at right now is I have found a person with a trained cadaver dog that’s experienced in search and rescue, that is willing to go with me out there, but we’ve got to secure enough funding to make it all work.”
A Go Fund me page has raised over 5 thousand dollars toward a ten-thousand-dollar goal for the cadaver dog search operation, but an initial fundraising page was taken down after Steve Keel’s wife Liz and others objected to its use of her husband’s name and photo.
Liz Keel says: “There were probably 15 or 20 people that reported the fundraiser. That it was not authorized by us, by our family.”
Liz was initially appreciative of Showalter’s help, but the relationship soured after Showalter and others became publicly critical on social media of the way Keel family members and friends were directing the operation.
“He was at the point of you know slandering people from here."
She adds that: "After 39 years of marriage and 41 years of being together, I’m not sure how these people have the right to tell us what we want to do.”
Showalter’s Go Fund Me page has been replaced with one that does not use Steve Keel’s name or photo. Showalter maintains he’s done nothing wrong, and that some Keel family members support him. He also emphasizes that all funds raised will be used exclusively for the cadaver dog search.
“I’m not doing this for money for myself. I’m not asking for compensation. It’s nothing like that.”
Showalter says any money not spent on the search will be returned proportionality to those who donated. Meanwhile, Liz Keel is organizing a separate search that’s also planned for this summer.
“And hopefully we’ll be successful. You know that’s our only goal, is to bring him home and lay him to rest in the place that loves.”
The Keel family withdrew a 15 thousand dollar reward this past winter to put the money toward their search efforts. ###