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Black cloth covers the mirrors in the Stokol home this week, a time when their son Trevor was to have begun medical school.

The family of Trevor Stokol – father Arnold, mother Barbara and sister Jodi – have covered the mirrors in their Far North Dallas home. Friends drop by, and the telephone rings. Dr. Arnold Stokol's green knit shirt, in Jewish tradition, is symbolically rent in grief.

"He really and truly lived more in his 25 years than a lot of people do in a lifetime," Dr. Stokol said of his son, who is now presumed dead after having been reported missing since July 22 during a trip to Nepal.

Dr. Stokol, his wife, Barbara, and daughter, Jodi, returned from that country to their Far North Dallas home Sunday night, abandoning an intensive three-week search for Trevor, who was last seen hiking near the Mount Everest base camp.

The family now believes that he was caught in an avalanche or fell into a crevasse.

A memorial service is scheduled for 7 tonight at Chabad of Dallas, 6710 Levelland Road.

On July 22, Trevor was nearing the end of an eight-month trip to Asia before beginning classes at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

He and a friend had been visiting the Mount Everest base camp to take photos of the area. After four frustrating days of rain, they trekked toward the treacherous Khumbu Icefall.


Trevor Stokol The friend turned back after three hours, with Trevor telling her, "You can start worrying if I am not home by dark."

When he did not return, fellow hikers and Sherpas from a nearby village searched for Trevor that evening and the next day.

On the second day, Dr. Stokol said, he received a call that "every parent would dread" – the American Embassy in Nepal told the family of Trevor's disappearance.

Dr. Stokol flew to Nepal immediately, overseeing a search by men on foot and in helicopters that lasted eight days. His wife and daughter also flew to Nepal, and the family hired an Australian search-and-rescue expert to coordinate a second search.

Dr. Stokol also held a news conference there, pleading for information from people who might have seen his son. Trevor's sister enlisted U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions' office in obtaining thermal imaging equipment that might aid in the search.

Toward the end of the second search, Dr. Stokol heard that an avalanche had occurred the same day his son had hiked to the Khumbu Icefall and that it was more extensive than had been thought. At that moment, he said, he concluded that his son was dead.

"It made no sense that there was no trace of him," he said. "With that, I realized that we may not find him."

After returning home, the family reminisced about the son they remembered as sometimes headstrong and always passionate.

"He was tenacious, and he loved to have a full life," Mrs. Stokol said. "He had a sense of adventure. He loved to do things his way."

The fact that he was never found makes the grieving harder, she said.

"Where there's a body, there's a finality that you don't have here," she said. "In something like this, you just have to accept the fact that nature has won."