SAN DIEGO — San Diego search and rescue crews found the body of missing hiker, 50-year-old Diem Le Nguyen, Monday, June 24, off of the Nighthawk Trail on Black Mountain.
Police said they found a body believed to Le Nguyen's description around 9:15 a.m. Monday. She was found a quarter mile from the nearest intersection. Her family has been notified.
The medical examiner is taking over the investigation and will confirm the identity.
Nguyen went hiking with a group of 100 people on Nighthawk Trail at 9711 Oviedo Way. The hike was a charity event for "Build a School Foundation" to raise money for building new schools in Southeast Asia. When her friends and family stopped halfway up the trail around 8 a.m., Diem continued with the rest of the group, police said.
"I did a live stream and she was in the video and that is how we confirmed that she made it to the top and some of the frames show she started walking down by herself while we started hanging around to take a group picture," said Jimmy Thai, hike organizer.
Thai and his wife are Vietnamese refugees who founded Build a School Foundation in 2016. CBS 8 featured their non-profit work and efforts to bring communities together. Thai says in the eight years of doing charity hikes nothing like this has ever happened.
"This is the saddest moment in my life," said Thai.
That video was taken around 9:30 a.m. At 10 a.m. Nguyen made a distress call. The reason for the distress call has not been made public.
Crews as well as a rescue helicopter searched the mountain through the night but were unable to find signs of Nguyen until Monday morning.
Police say the body was found a quarter mile from Carmel Mountain Road and Via Rimini on a mountainside.
Thai says they have people who swept the mountain to make sure everyone is accounted for and one saw Nguyen coming down the mountain. It's unclear how she got separated from the group.
Police did not initially release a cause of death.
The story will be updated with any new developments.