A mishandled call to emergency dispatchers may have cost a missing Beaverton woman her life, according to newly released details surrounding the search for Beverly Johnson.

Beverly Johnson

The Grays Harbor County, Wash., sheriff’s office is investigating whether Johnson’s purple Honda Accord was spotted just hours after she went missing.

A 9-1-1 call about the incident came five hours after Johnson was last seen on January 27th. An explorer scout from Vancouver, Wash. noticed a car matching Johnson's being driven erratically west of Olympia and made the call, reporting it as a possible drunk driver.

Later in Portland that same night, he saw a television news report about Johnson.

"When he sees that, he recognizes the car, he calls again and says that was the woman. For reasons we don't know, he was told that wasn't the vehicle," said Gray's Harbor undersheriff Rick Scott.

Johnson, who suffered from seizures, disappeared after a routine trip to the Beaverton library.

Her body was found on a remote logging road in Washington state 11 days later. She was 70 miles from where the purple car was spotted weaving.

The probe into how the call was handled and how it potentially affected the search outcome is eerily reminiscent of the Kim family's misfortune.

 Background: Missing woman died of hypothermia

 Also: Ore. Gov. requests review of Kim search

Three members of the San Francisco family, which went missing in the rugged Oregon coast range last December, were rescued. The body of husband and father James Kim, however, was found days after he went to seek help.

Several newspaper articles questioned the effectiveness of the Kim family search. Allegations of miscommunication between state agencies hampering search efforts prompted Governor Ted Kulongoski to request a report detailing the facts and timeline surrounding the search.

Johnson's death was ruled as "accidental with probable hypothermia" according to authorities.

Her friends and family had been searching for her car and hoping for a miracle. She was without her medication and likely became disoriented, her family has said.

(KGW reporter Nancy Francis also contributed to this article.)