Cupcakes and Muffins: condolences muttered thousands of miles away

I only just found out what had happened to James Kim. I first heard about it when I surfed by TechieDiva. All that ran through my head when I first started reading what they had wrote was, "Oh no.. They can't be talking about James Kim.." until I got to the part where his name was mentioned.

I am shocked and saddened by the news. It shook me more than what had happened to Steve Irwin because in comparison, James Kim was more of a hero to me.

To each his own.

I started to know about him watching TechTV and I always enjoyed watching him pointing out the pros and cons of certain products. Then TechTV stopped being shown here, no more watching him point stuff out. Then one day I decided to surf about CNET and found him again as I was watching the videos. I felt delighted that he's fine and that he was still pointing things out.

He was a favorite with me because he always had this positive attitude. He was cheerful, friendly, and always smiling.

The story goes:

Mr. Kim and his wife Kati, their daughters -- 4-year-old Penelope and their 7-month-old baby Sabine -- were stranded in their car in a heavy snow after making a wrong turn onto a logging road west of Grant's Pass, Ore.

The Kims lived in San Francisco, where James Kim worked for a tech news Web site. His family owned two boutiques and a coffee shop where he stopped each day, buying a double latte in the morning and a frappe that he brought home to his wife each night.

They were driving home from Thanksgiving in Seattle, and missed a turn when snow began to fall; and their car got stuck.

The logging road they turned down should be blocked off by a gate in November, because it's considered hazardous in winter. But authorities said yesterday that vandals apparently cut the lock; and the gate was open.

For a week, the Kims huddled and ate berries, baby food and crackers. After a few days, they had to burn their tires to keep warm, and to try to attract attention. When they ran out of food, Kati Kim, who is still nursing their baby, breast-fed 4-year-old Penelope, too.

In these times of mobile phones, instant messages and global positioning satellites, it is hard to imagine that you can be lost and out of reach anywhere in the United States. Many news accounts have tried to imagine the pain, cold, hunger and fright the family must have felt -- the excruciating uncertainty, day after day, as they weren't found and couldn't know that hundreds of people were searching for them.

What might have been hardest for James and Kati Kim was to see and hear their children suffer.

So after a week stuck in the wilderness, and no sign of rescue, James Kim decided that a father has to do whatever he can to save his family -- or die trying. He struck out to try to find help. Hungry, weak, and wearing only street clothes, James Kim, a city boy from San Francisco, walked and crawled for ten miles over sharp ledges, through bristling forests and swam through freezing creek waters.

Two days after he left, Kati Kim and their daughters were found. Their health is good. But two days after that, James Kim was found dead in a ravine, of exposure.

So much of modern popular culture depicts parents who are goofy, foolish, clueless and slightly pathetic. Almost every parent is certain they would risk their life for those they love; James Kim actually made that sacrifice.

As Joe Hyatt, a member of the rescue team searching for James Kim, told reporters this week: "He must have been an extremely amazing individual. I would only hope I could do the same for my family."