Missing Mass. hiker walks out of woods

Mary O'Brien, the elementary school teacher from Arlington who disappeared last Monday while hiking in Washington state, walked out of woods late yesterday, according to her brother.

"Mary walked out alive," Neil O'Brien, her younger brother, said at his parents' home yesterday evening. "We're celebrating in Malden tonight."

The parents and siblings of O'Brien had been huddling in the family home in Malden, waiting for news from rescue crews, and had issued an impassioned appeal to anyone who might know of O'Brien's whereabouts. Fifty searchers had hunted for traces of the hiker from daybreak till sunset for the past five days in the snowy mountain trails of Olympic National Park.

Yesterday , O'Brien walked alone out of the woods to a boat launch at Lake Mills, O'Brien said.

"Mary had walked perhaps 40 or 50 miles," he said. He added that boat launch employees had offered her the services of a paramedic, but she had refused.

"I just have a few things -- I need a ride," O'Brien said, according to the rescue team, who reported the incident to her family.

Neil O'Brien said the family had no more details last evening, even a few hours after his sister emerged. Mary O'Brien was apparently still with rescue crews. "We're carrying the phone around hoping they'll let her call us," he said.

O'Brien's older sister Sharon had issued a press release urging anyone who had seen the missing teacher to report to the park

"Mary is not a weekend warrior. She is a dedicated, serious, intelligent athlete," Sharon O'Brien wrote . "We would like our sister to come home."

Earlier, Neil O'Brien described Mary as an experienced hiker who never used a global positioning system device and could have lost track of the mountain trail in melting snow. Mary's brother Gerry, who lives in Oregon, and sister Anne, who lives in New York, had flown to the park to join the search.

Neil, Sharon, their sisters Caroline and Roisin, and their parents, Margaret and Leo, waited for news from the rescue crews in Malden.