For nine days, Kati Kim -- the wife of CNET senior editor James Kim -- kept her four-year-old and seven-month-old daughters alive and safe, burning their station wagon's tires for warmth, while their husband set out on foot for help. They were all apparently far from general cell phone range in the woods of western Oregon, where they encountered car trouble, taking the long way home to California.

At mid-afternoon today, the three were evacuated to a nearby hospital, where they are listed in good condition. Now, police are on the trail of their husband, according to a statement from the family Web site, with the aid of night-vision and infrared cameras that found his footprints leading from the vehicle.

It may have been technology which trapped Kim's family in the woods, but it was a technologist who may be credited with locating them.

CNET says an employee of Edge Wireless, the cellular provider in the area, developed computer models on the fly that processed data from faint signals he believed to be coming from their cell phone. The Kim family then commissioned a helicopter and sent it toward the location the employee had triangulated.

Along that route, pilots spotted a woman waving an umbrella in the air. It was Kati, and now rescuers believe James can't be far behind.

"The officials known the area where James is located now," reads the family Web site. "They have 60 searchers on sno-cats, in 4x4s and are covering the area heavily with helicopter searches." The site also contains more information for people in the area who would volunteer their efforts to join in the search.

Of all the news about the advancement of little gadgets and portable thingies that make downloadable noises and multicore processors that store data to terabit devices, none of it matters a whit compared to this. The family asks us all to keep up the hope and prayers, as the happiest ending of all is now within our grasp.