Found after four days

8-year-old boy 'alive and well' after outdoor ordeal

Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 31, 2006 at midnight

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CAÑON CITY - The mountains produced an answered prayer late Tuesday in the form of a tired 8- year-old boy who survived four days alone in the rugged high country.

Evan Thompson was located by a search team from Vail Mountain Rescue aboard an all-terrain vehicle about 4:20 p.m. Tuesday at Hole in the Rock Gulch, roughly five miles northwest from the mesa-top campsite he ran away from Saturday morning after a breakfast of Lucky Charms, an orange and a glass of milk.

"He's alive and well," said an elated Zak Slutzky of Western State Mountain Rescue in Gunnison. "He's completely unharmed."

Evan told his foster mother that one of the nights he was missing he spent in a tree. Another, he said, he slept on a rock.

Despite wandering alone for roughly 79 hours, with no provisions or extra clothing in an environment where temperatures were hitting the low 40s and mountain lions are common, a preliminary medical assessment found nothing wrong with Evan that a meal and a lot of rest wouldn't cure.

He started his re-entry to civilization by sampling leftover pizza at the searchers' command base before being driven back to Cañon City at dusk.

"Good," Evan said, when asked how he was feeling, upon being greeted a short time later by no fewer than nine television cameras and a couple dozen members of the media after being chauffeured down from the search area by a Fremont County sheriff's truck.

He was sporting a red hooded sweatshirt, jeans, the Spider-Man sneakers that had left enough tracks to give searchers hope during their search and a look that could have been confusion, fatigue or, likely, both.

His aunt and legal guardian, Teddi Gray, of Lakewood, read a brief statement thanking search crews from 15 agencies who scoured the forbidding terrain on foot, horseback and ATV and from military helicopters. Evan had run off from a group that included his teacher and other school friends about 9:30 a.m. Saturday.

Their camper had been parked on a mesa at about 7,260 feet off Shelf Road, which winds through prime hiking and rock-climbing terrain that would test the fittest adult outdoors enthusiast.

On Tuesday, there were 20 search teams, totaling 90 people, combing the 15-square-mile area between Cañon City and Cripple Creek.

"We are overwhelmed and overjoyed at having Evan safe, and back, with him in our arms," Gray said, before collecting him and returning to the sheriff's truck for the 15-mile drive back to Cañon City.

Laurie Clark, an attorney who practices juvenile law in Adams County, is Evan's guardian ad litem. She talked with Teddi Gray after Evan's safe recovery.

"He told her he spent one night in a tree and one night on a rock," Clark said. "She hugged him, and he said, 'What's wrong, Aunt Teddi?' He just has no clue as to how worried everybody was.

"I'm just absolutely elated that he's all right. We're so happy that he's back."

Clark said that Teddi and Arthur Gray, of Lakewood, have been Evan's foster parents since October. He was taken from his birth parents, Mary and Cliff Thompson, in May 2005 "because of our drug use," Mary Thompson said Tuesday night. Arthur Gray is Mary Thompson's brother.

She learned that her boy was all right late Tuesday afternoon, just as she was preparing to give an interview to CNN's Nancy Grace.

"I'm just ecstatic," said Mary Thompson, who lives in Denver. "He's a strong boy. He comes from good stock. It's a miracle. It all comes from God."

The conclusion of Evan's drama came on the heels of a news conference his foster mother Teddi Gray appeared at about four miles south of the search operations base.

At that news conference, Gray, her voice choked at times with emotion, asked for people to send their "hopes and prayers for Evan's safe return."

What she didn't know is that at about that time, the search for Evan was ending with his safe recovery.

It had previously been disclosed that Evan has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Gray on Tuesday said that he also has sensory integration disorder, emotional and behavioral disorder and significant limited mental capacity.

All of those diagnoses, searchers said, heightened the challenges involved in finding him. He might not perceive himself as lost, they said. And he might not understand that those looking for him had his safe return as their only goal.

"We knew about this, and we have been searching accordingly," said Western State Mountain Rescue's Slutzky. "We have taken that into account, from the beginning."

Even when there are no complicating health issues, Slutzky said, "Sometimes children may hide from searchers. When they see 90 searchers tromping through the woods, they may think they are in trouble - or they might not even know they are lost."

At points during Tuesday's search, Teddi Gray joined the effort by calling for Evan in targeted areas, through a voice amplifier.

"I was telling him he's not in trouble, and we're ready to take him for hot dogs, pickles and a raspberry Slurpee," Gray said.

The search for Evan had been carried out over a rugged landscape prominently featuring an abundance of cliffs and steep ravines.

"It's real rough," said Douglas County Search and Rescue member Bill Clendenning. "There's lots of scrub oak. Once you get over the hill, on the edge of it, it gets real steep. There's a lot of loose rock."

It got the best of one searcher, who was injured midday Tuesday, when the loose and arid soil beneath him gave way. He was evacuated to an area hospital, but his injuries were said to be minor.

Slutzky said there was no specific clue or sign that led searchers to the spot where Evan was recovered.

"They were doing their search pattern as instructed," he said. "You're looking for a needle in a haystack, but this is the outcome you're shooting for. We never gave up hope. We were going to keep going until we found him."

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