Just what he was doing on Orcas Island has yet to be determined.

But a man accused of kidnapping and raping a 15-year-old girl in early December is headed back to Alaska after being apprehended last week in Eastsound.

“We’re not really sure why he went there,” San Juan County Undersheriff Jon Zerby said. “But we want to find out what he was doing here and who he might have been hanging around with.”

Christopher Scholes, 39, waived his right to an extradition hearing and agreed to return to Alaska during a Dec. 9 appearance in San Juan County Superior Court. Scholes, who, according to court documents, faces six counts of first-degree rape and one count of kidnapping, was taken into custody Dec. 8 after a deputy spotted him near a pay phone by Island Market in Eastsound.

Zerby said local law enforcement officials had been alerted that Scholes was headed to Orcas after he fled Sea-Tac airport, where authorities at that time planned to apprehend him, the week before. He was taken into custody without incident and was in Island County Jail at the time of his Dec. 9 court appearance.

According to court documents, Scholes reportedly told authorities that he was at Sea-Tac airport with the intention of returning to Alaska to face the multiple felony charges. Why he fled the airport instead remains unclear.

Zerby said it appears that Scholes had been on Orcas a “day or two” before he was taken into custody, but is believed to have been on the island several times before.

A resident of Juneau, Scholes is accused of grabbing the 15-year-old girl while she was walking near a middle school, abducting her to a house and sexually assaulting her on the evening of Dec. 1. The girl reported the alleged assault the next day, according to Juneau Empire.com, an online news source. A $500,000 warrant had been issued for his arrest based on the girl’s allegations.

Earlier this year, Scholes was convicted of a sexually motivated misdemeanor offense for breaking into the home of a friend in November 2007 and fraudulently charging $95 in phone sex, about 11 minutes’ worth, to the friend’s credit card. According to Juneau Empire.com, he was sentenced to 10 months in prison, nine of which were suspended and the other converted to 240 hours of community service, and ordered to undergo therapy for mental illness. He was diagnosed recently with bipolar disorder, an illness that often results in extreme mood swings, known also as manic depression, for which he had been prescribed lithium.