Friends of a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student who went missing Sunday are trying to find a group of UCLA students who were reportedly last seen with the student.
Brett Michael Olson, a 20-year-old from Lafayette, Calif., was last seen Sunday afternoon at an area known as Beer Can Beach while participating in a Labor Day float down the Sacramento River in Hamilton City, said Rich Warren, the Glenn County undersheriff. About 10,000 people between the ages of 18 and 22 attended the annual event, Warren added.
Olson’s longtime friend, Juliana Del Beccaro, created a Facebook page Tuesday evening to find more information about the missing student’s whereabouts.
The Facebook group had more than 25,000 members as of this afternoon.
Michael Bissell, a 19-year-old University of Oregon student, participated in the float with Olson and two other friends. Bissell said the four friends met a group of about 12 UCLA students, one of whom was wearing a blue UCLA hat, as they were floating down the river in their inner tubes.
After hitting the shore at Beer Can Beach, Bissell said he was talking to the UCLA students when he lost sight of Olson.
“That’s where I go blank,” he said. “I don’t know where Brett went.”
Bissell posted in a Facebook group, asking for help to find the group of UCLA students to see if they saw where Olson went. Meanwhile, Del Beccaro is hoping to spread the word about Olson.
“All it takes is adding that one person who might have seen (Olson) that has information that we don’t have,” Del Beccaro said.
Anyone with information about Olson’s whereabouts can contact the Glenn County Sheriff’s Department at 530-934-6441.
[ Updated at 6:45 p.m. UCLA Undergraduate Students Association Council president David Bocarsly posted a press release on Facebook this afternoon, asking students with any information about Olson or the UCLA students he was last seen with to contact Olson’s friends and to share the press release with others on Facebook.
Bocarsly said many UCLA students reached out to him asking him to help spread the word about Olson.
“If the UCLA community can come together and help find him, that would be great,” Bocarsly said.]
Compiled by Jillian Beck, Bruin senior staff.