SAN FRANCISCO (KTVU) - The San Francisco Unified Schools Superintendent paid tribute Wednesday to high school teacher Ed Cavanaugh, 45, who is being remembered by students and co-workers as an educator who changed the lives of the urban youth he taught and mentored.
Cavanaugh had been missing for two weeks before a search party found a body Tuesday near his motorcycle in the woods north of Placerville.
Some of Cavanaugh's former students in the search party returned from El Dorado county Wednesday.
Cavanaugh was a math and science teacher in San Francisco since 2001, and students who took his classes at Downtown High School say he meant much more to them.
Erika Ubungen is a former student. She is now one of countless souls feeling the loss of their teacher who challenged them to push their boundaries by taking urban youth into the wilderness and sharing his love of nature with them.
"It changed who I was and who I am now," Ubungen said.
At Lands End, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the Fort Miley rope course is where Cavanaugh took his lessons to the treetops, teaching students with his friend Drew McAdams, who helps run the Pacific Leadership Institute.
"Every week they'd be bringing students out here to learn how to lead the courses," McAdams said.
Cavanaugh's team-building courses changed the course of many students' lives, as well as those of the friends who worked with him.
"Ed would often say today you're going to be a leader, how you act is going to determine whether you're going to be a good leader or a bad leader," McAdams said.
As the young people learned the ropes, they also learned life lessons about trust, love, and building bonds of friendship as strong as family.
"We all became a family and that's what made me come back," said Ubungen.
For two weeks, the students Cavanaugh took into the wilderness used those lessons to look for the teacher they loved. Hundreds of volunteers searched for Cavanaugh in the woods north of Placerville where he disappeared July 17th.
"It was really frustrating. We were looking for hours. Couldn't find anything," Ubungen said.
Now, if they could have a final word for him, it would be words of thanks.
"Thank you for opening up these doors for all of us. Because if it wasn't for this program, I don't know where any of us would be. Because it honestly changed how I see life," Ubungen said.
Cavanaugh's life, they hope, will live on now in the hearts of so many people he touched.
"I've never had anyone impact my life like that, ever. He cared so much," Ubungen said.
School starts August 17th and the district is hoping to find a way to keep Cavanaugh's program going.