by Rigorous Intuition » Wed Oct 25, 2006 4:53 pm
<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Pole scientist vanishes on Utah stopover</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Saturday, October 21, 2006</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>Police are looking for a noted scientist from Poland who boarded a flight from Canada to Hawaii and vanished during a stopover in Salt Lake City.<br><br>Piotr Drabik is last believed to have been at Salt Lake City International Airport on Sept. 1, headed to Honolulu, where family members said he was planning to head to the island of Molokai to climb the cliffs there.<br><br>Police said Drabik, 34, flew from Edmonton, Alberta, to Salt Lake City on a SkyWest flight. He was then supposed to board a connecting Delta flight to Honolulu.<br><br>"He never boarded the Delta flight," Maui County Police Sgt. Ken Prather said Friday. "His baggage had been checked, though."<br><br>The luggage has not turned up in Hawaii.<br><br>Salt Lake City police said when Drabik did not return on Sept. 8, family members became concerned and filed a missing persons report. Investigators checked car rental companies at the airport and did not find any record of Drabik. Airport surveillance video has not been any help because it was recorded over, police said.<br><br>Drabik's credit card has also gone unused.<br><br>"I checked his credit card on Sept. 20; he hadn't used it the whole month," Prather said.<br><br>Drabik is a minor celebrity in Poland with a reputation as a brilliant scientist and an adventurer. His biography said he has two doctoral degrees and three master's degrees from a Polish university. He speaks English, Russian and Polish fluently.<br><br>He is an author and an expert in physiology, molecular biology and chemistry. He is also considered a champion athlete. A picture of Drabik at Mount Everest's base camp is included with his biography on the Web site for his work.<br><br>Drabik was last working as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institute for Nanotechnology, which is a partnership between Canada's National Research Council and the University of Alberta.<br><br>"People here are concerned," institute spokeswoman Shannon Jones told the Deseret Morning News on Friday. "The last time anybody had any contact with him was Aug. 31."<br><br>In Hawaii, leads have dried up. Prather said he has done all he can to try to find the missing man.<br><br>"I don't think he came to this state," he said.<br><br>The FBI recently became involved, helping Salt Lake City police investigate the missing persons case, said Special Agent Scott Wall. Anyone with information is asked to call Salt Lake City police at 799-3000.<br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,650200583,00.html">deseretnews.com</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
