The Knife: Off Record – 124

Patia shares a story she’s followed for years and has a personal connection to: the disappearance of Samantha Sayers, who vanished after hiking Vesper Peak in August 2018. Patia grew close with Samantha’s mother, who has never stopped searching for her daughter. Then, Hannah tells the extraordinary survival story of Robert Schock, who set out for a trail run in 2024 and survived 30 harrowing days lost in the wilderness. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised. Hello,

(00:23):
and welcome to the Knife Off Record. I'm Hannah Smith.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
I'm Patia Eaton. Today.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
We both have stories of disappearances, but you're going to
go first. And this is a story that I know
has become pretty personal to you over the years.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, it has, and I will just get right into it. Okay, great.
So the story that I'm going to be telling you
today started for me about two years ago when I
met a woman named Lisa Sayers, whose daughter Samantha has
been missing since August one, twenty eighteen. And I initially
had reached out to Lisa to ish years ago, now

(00:59):
a little over two years ago, down about working on
a series about Sam's disappearance, and for a lot of reasons,
that didn't happen the way we'd all hoped it would.
But Lisa became my friend and we continued talking, we
stayed in touch, and we got pretty close. And at
this time I had recently had a baby girl, and
you know, call it like postpartum hormones or just plain

(01:22):
old human connection. Lisa's heartache and living in this world
that was still turning despite her daughter having just disappeared
was palpable and it's a pain I hope I never
fully understand, but her love for her daughter is something
that I do now understand, and it really like drew

(01:45):
me to Lisa and what she was going through and
connected me to her story in this new way that
I hadn't experienced before. And so when I met Lisa,
she had survived cancer, but she was living with active disease,
and unfortun her cancer returned and she did pass away
in June of twenty twenty five. It was really difficult,

(02:07):
you know. I spoke to Lisa maybe a day or
two before she passed. She was just an incredible person.
And Lisa had told me that her greatest fear was
not dying, but it was leaving behind the people that
she loved and not being able to continue to push
for the search for Sam and for her to be found.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Because she was the one that was still pushing for that. Yeah,
and I imagine that she would always want that to
continue to be talked about and known about, and like
if anyone has any information about her daughter.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
For sure, And so I'm going to tell the story
of Sam's disappearance today, and I'm going to keep hoping
that she will be found. So I want to start
out with talking a little bit about Sam and who
she was. Sam is from Pennsylvania, That's where Lisa is from,
and she was living there with her two children, Sam

(03:00):
and Sam's brother, Ian, and their biological father was an
alcoholic and he was not really in the picture, and
soon after having children, Lisa left. So I think she
left when Sam was three and Ian was four. And
about a year after that, Lisa met a man named Ron,

(03:21):
and she and Ron were married. And I had so
many conversations with Lisa, and I can't tell you how
much we talked about Ron and just what a positive
force he is in her life and in her children's lives,
and he became their father. And so if I ever
refer to Sam's father later in the episode, I just

(03:43):
want to say, that's who I'm talking about. I'm talking
about Ron, got it. Yeah. Ron also had a child
when he came into the marriage, a son, Ryan, who's
ten years older than Sam. And so Sam was really
close with both of her brothers, Ryan and Ian. They
would go camping and fishing often, and this is where
Sam's love of the outdoors really started. To take hold.

(04:04):
Our childhood was great. They had a loving, close knit
family and Sam really thrived. But in high school, this
scary thing started happening and her hair started falling out.
Oh wow. Yeah, and she was a performer, she loved
musical theater, and you know, this is already a time
when most adolescent girls are grappling with some level of

(04:25):
physical insecurity. So it was really difficult. And it ended
up that Sam was diagnosed with alopecia, an autoimmune disorder
that results in hair loss. And this was at first,
of course, really devastating for Sam. Her hair began falling
out so rapidly that she started wearing a wig. But
you know, I mentioned she was really involved in musical

(04:47):
theater and the wig was sort of getting in the way,
it was making it more difficult, and so eventually one
day Sam just took the wig off. And Lisa told
me that a teacher actually wrote her her letter and said,
you know, I've been living with alopecia and just feel
so empowered by this teenage girl's bravery. Wow. Yeah, that's

(05:09):
really inspiring, it is. And Lisa was really proud of
Sam for that. Yeah, And so that's kind of who
Sam was She was just a person going through the
stages of life that we all go through, but she
was really bold and brave and adventurous. And so after college,
Sam and her boyfriend at the time really they had

(05:30):
a great relationship. They decided to visit Seattle, and Sam
really fell in love with it. You know, Seattle has
this close proximity to lots of beautiful state parks and hiking,
and it drew her in. And I'm actually from Seattle,
I can attest to that. It's like stunning, especially in
the summer. And so shortly after this move, she and

(05:51):
her boyfriend broke up, but it was peaceful. They remained
friends and Sam started dating someone new, a man named
Kevin Derrek. Kevin's from Louisiana, so there are both transplants
from somewhere else. They connected on that. They also really
connected on their love of the outdoors. Kevin also loved hiking,
and things moved pretty quickly and they moved in together,

(06:14):
and Kevin was actually managing an apartment building and so
Sam moved in with him and she was cleaning apartments
on the side because he also had some sort of
short term rental situation and it was good. Sam seemed
to like really be into that relationship for a time,
but things, according to Lisa, just became a little more difficult.

(06:37):
Sam was really short on money. She wasn't making a
lot of money cleaning these apartments and was having trouble
finding a job. And you know that creates tension in
a lot of relationships, right, this like financial stress. And
so Lisa remembers early summer twenty eighteen hearing a lot
from Sam that things were just a little rockier. She

(07:00):
was a little more unhappy, felt a little bit lonely
and confused about her future. And she had been trying
to figure out a way to get back home to Pennsylvania,
but she didn't have a lot of money for a
plane ticket. It's also breakups are just not that cut
and dry usually. So how long were they together? I

(07:20):
don't fully have an answer to that, because Lisa is
not sure that Sam told her when they first started dating.
But you know, well over a year.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Okay, and then they're living together. So the breakup is
I imagine then she's having to find somewhere to live or
they're still living together.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Maybe right, There's so many logistics that go into breaking
up with someone once you move in together, or even
if you're both wanting to do that. Yeah. Yeah, And
so now it's a good time for me to tell
you that I have never spoken with Kevin. We emailed
briefly a couple of years ago, and he declined to
speak with me about Sam's disappearance, and you know what,

(07:54):
like that's totally fine. I'm sure that was a very
traumatic experience for him, but I just want to call
that out. So Sam disappears August first, twenty eighteen. So
I'm going to take you, actually right now back to
a couple of days before that, which is July twenty ninth.
So as Lisa remembered it, on July twenty ninth, she

(08:15):
had a conversation with Sam where Sam told her that
she had had a big fight with Kevin about money.
And Lisa, you know, was troubled by this, but sort
of not sure what she could do to help. She
didn't have a lot of extra money to you know, send.
She was just kind of a listening ear and a
source of support for Sam. They were very close. They

(08:37):
had broken up at this point, but they hadn't She
had married, Yeah, so they hadn't broken up. Sam as
Lisa remembers it had just been sort of toying with
the idea. In conversations with Lisa.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
She was like, maybe we'll break up and I'll move
home kind of thing, right, I see, But they were
still together. They were still together, and you know, I
think it was one of those things where some days
were bad, some days were good.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
It sounds like it was a little bit tumultuous. So
on July twenty ninth, Lisa remembers this conversation with Sam
that Sam says, look, Kevin and I got into a
big fight about money. Lisa had mentioned to me at
one point an email that she got from a man
named Joe Corsy who had emailed her and told her
about this fight because it happened in public outside a bar,

(09:23):
and that he had witnessed it. But I've never seen
that email. I've never spoken to Joe. But Lisa was
very convinced that this fight happened not physical, just verbal.
So on July thirtieth, twenty eighteen, Sam Sayers, who's twenty
seven at the time, posts a status on her Facebook
page and she says, Seattle friends, I'm going hiking this

(09:46):
Wednesday and tackling Vesper Peak eight miles round trip, forty
two hundred feet elevation gain. Spike's recommended but should not
be totally necessary. This is not a beginner's hike, but
anyone is welcome who feels up for it. Leaving early am,
potentially not back until six or seven, depending on speed
and how long you spend at the summit. Message me

(10:07):
if you want to tag along. I have three spaces
in my admittedly small car. So Sam doesn't end up
getting any bites on this invitation to join her on
her hike up Vesper Peak, but she's deterred. She's going
to go anyway. Kevin couldn't go, he had a work conflict,

(10:28):
but she was like, whatever, I have the day off,
I'm going to go do the hike. So the next
day on July thirty first, So facebook post is happening
July thirtieth. The next day is July thirty first, and
the hike happens August first, So we're in the day
before the hike right now. Okay. So Lisa and Sam
texted for what would be the last time on this day,

(10:49):
July thirty first, and Lisa tells Sam, I'm concerned about
you going hiking alone. Sam reassures Lisa, I'll be fine.
I've done this hike before. And that's true. She had
done this hike before, and Sam, you know, told Lisa
she didn't think it would be that difficult. And this
doesn't fully quashed Lisa's worry. But you know, what could

(11:11):
she do. Sam is a grown woman, She's living across
the country. She can't just say no, don't go. She
knew there was no trying to stop her. And so
the next morning, August one, twenty eighteen, at around eight
o'clock in the morning, Sam says goodbye to Kevin, gets
in her car and drives approximately ninety minutes to two

(11:31):
hours to the Sunrise Mine trailhead to hike Vesper Peak.
And we know that she gets there because she signs
in at the registry at the front of the hike
and she begins her assent. On her way there, Kevin
had texted her. He said, I know you don't need
me to tell you this, but the terrain can be dangerous,
and she replied with something like, I know, I love you.

(11:53):
Things were good, he said. He's quoted in another interview
he did saying that he was one hundred and ten
percent sure that he would see her later that night,
and Kevin was right. The terrain can be dangerous. Vesper
Peak is in the North Cascades and the North cast
Gates have a nickname the American Alps because it is

(12:13):
this vast and rugged country with thick timber, deep valleys,
jagged peaks. This hike is not this like zig zaggy,
flat dirt trail or the kind of hike that I've
been ed out on. This is like, you know, she
brought walking sticks. This is like rocks and glaciers. She
had said in her post spikes recommended, which I think

(12:37):
means on your shoes. Yeah, for walking over like ice
or rocky terrain. Perhaps totally. Yeah, there's still snow on
the ground at that elevation. You know, there's glaciers, there's ice,
there's snow, and so it was a moderately difficult hike
at least. So we know that sand park's at the trailhead.
Sometime around ten am, we know she signs this register

(12:58):
and she begins her ascent now before leaving on the hike.
Sam and Kevin, according to Kevin, who because this park
comes out later, because why would it have come out before?
They make an agreement that she'll call and check in
with him somehow at about six pm when she is
done with the hike. Okay, But this call never comes

(13:18):
and no one has seen or heard from Sam Sayers
since August first, twenty eighteen, which is now over seven
years ago. Yeah, and no trace of Sam Says has
ever been found, not an article of clothing, not a
cell phone, nothing.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Wow, yeah, nothing. They found her car, I'm guessing, or
her car was still in the parking lot. Yeah, I'm
sure you'll get into that.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, I will. I will get into that because it
is I think an interesting part of this.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Do we know if she went into the park alone?
Like is that something that's listed when you sign in
how many people are in your vehicle?

Speaker 2 (13:54):
We don't know other than that she never told anyone
if she ended up going with someone else, And she
does end up being spotted on the hike and she
wasn't with anyone, so she signs in solo at the registram.
I think the conclusion from the investigation that ends up
happening as she was alone. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
It has to be such a bad feeling to be
expecting that phone call and then just it never comes. Yeah,
and then you I imagine wondering like, well, how worried
should I be? Was there just a delay? When do
you take action? Like when Kevin didn't get that phone call,
what did he do next?

Speaker 2 (14:32):
Kevin has given a couple of interviews where he runs
people through what he did when he doesn't get that call,
and some of his actions or choices that night never
really sat well with Lisa. But Kevin's never been a
suspect in the investigation at all. So Kevin, when Sam's
call doesn't come, his response is by seven fifteen, he's

(14:54):
on his way there himself to look for her. He
stops at a gas station, buys a flashlight. It gets
to the trailhead, where we can later confirm he's there
around ten PM at the trailhead because a witness later says, hey,
I ran into Kevin at the trailhead at this time.
But he finds Sam's car, a blue Ford Fiesta, sitting

(15:15):
at the trailhead, and he's like, okay, so I got
to go find her. She's injured somewhere, that's the sort
of assumption. So he heads up the trail with this flashlight.
I mean this trail that's dangerous in the daylight. I
can only imagine climbing it or hiking it at night
would be really dangerous. Yeah, and you know, I'm from
Washington State and it does stay very light out very

(15:37):
late there. But at ten pm the sun is setting.
So he goes up and he's searching for sam for
hours on his own, and then his flashlight breaks somehow
and he heads back down the mountain. So at one
o'clock in the morning, the night of August first, so

(15:57):
really one am, technically August second, Kevin calls nine one
one and I actually have the nine one one call. Oh, okay,
nine on one.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
What's seaddress and the emergency.

Speaker 4 (16:11):
It's out in the woods, one mount of vesper vesper Peak.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
Let's see and what's going on?

Speaker 4 (16:23):
Had a hiker, Samantha Players, who left early this morning
for a day hike. Was supposed to be out by six.
Didn't hear from her. We drove up from stir I
drove up from Seattle, hit the trail at ten, flashlight
broke on the scramble, cannot find her car still out there?

Speaker 3 (16:42):
And are you on the trail?

Speaker 4 (16:44):
No? I had to drive a the way back. There's
no service. I'm at the pay phone by the service center.
My flashlight broke on the scramble. I gotta go try
and find some flashlights and batteries somewhere.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
All right, I'm gonna bring my supervisor on the line.

Speaker 4 (17:01):
Stay with me, okay, huh.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
I mean, it's interesting that he said we drove up,
and then he corrected himself to I drove up, Like,
what do you think about that?

Speaker 2 (17:12):
You know, I don't know that I would have thought
anything about it, But it was something that Lisa pointed
out to me, and that because her relationship with Kevin
ends up dissolving, she never really felt like she could
understand why he said we at first. But you know,
I know, and our editor knows, like I must speak
all the time. So could have just been could have

(17:34):
just been one of those things. But it was certainly
not like the most conventional reaction to not getting the
phone call you thought you would get when she got
off of the hike. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
I mean, in all these scenarios, it's so tempting to
read into people's reactions or nine one one calls, But
really I always think, I don't know, like I don't
know how I would be also calling nine to one one.
I always think I would want to just like clearly
give the information that seems needed, right, Yeah, And I

(18:09):
don't think we can read too much into how someone
sounds emotionally in those moments.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah, totally. And we could get into the weeds on this,
but everyone has their own response to trauma. Yeah. So
after this nine one one call, police dispatch arrives, and
by the next morning, August second, in the morning, a
full search is underway for Sam. Yeah, it's unconventional that

(18:36):
Kevin went and looked by himself with a flashlight, but
that's what he did. And I actually had this other
conversation with a good friend of Kevin's about this decision,
which I pressed on that because it is weird, or
I should say, in my opinion, it's like, it's not
how I would have handled it. But he said, look,
Kevin's my best friend, and he is from Louisiana and

(18:59):
an area where calling law enforcement to help if you
feel like someone's loss is not the first thing you do.
You would just go out and look for them yourselves,
because you know that countryside and Kevin knew this hike,
they had done it before. Plus I think, and I'm
speculating because I haven't talked to Kevin, but some people
feel a little more hesitant to take the time of

(19:20):
law enforcement on others. And also like what if he
got there and Sam was at her car and had
run out of gas, Like you don't know. But before
moving on, I want to play a clip from a
new segment where Kevin gave a short interview.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
Kristin Wilson reports that things since August first, Kevin Dares
her fiance has turned his home into a command base
for volunteers who have stepped up to help find her.
He explains that moment when he realized something was seriously wrong.

Speaker 4 (19:50):
I'll never forget that moment. Standing at the base had
least passed and it's about midnight, and you can't see anything,
and you have to step back, and you realize that
you can't do this yourself.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, I mean, this is what he says in the
nine to one one call, like he's realizing he needs help.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
That makes sense to me. Yeah, it makes sense that
he would think I'll just go find her and then
he has to realize, wait, that's not the situation.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Mm hmm totally. And so the other thing, I do
want a flag that, like I know Lisa was thinking
about a lot, and I've thought about myself, is that
this drive from the Beltone apartment to the trailhead only
has you know, intermittent cell phone service at best. And
one of my sort of questions that I would ask
Kevin if he ever decided to speak with me, is like,

(20:40):
were you concerned that on the drive you would miss
a call from Sam? Or she would call and you
wouldn't have service, and you guys would just drive right
past each other. But then I guess if you get
to the trailhead and her car isn't there, maybe you
assume she's gone home, and then you just turn around.
I mean, those are the questions I have about his
decision more than I have about his intent. Yeah. Yeah,

(21:04):
So Sam's disappearance is pretty quickly making local news, not
only in Seattle, but back in Pennsylvania and Gerard, Pennsylvania,
where Lisa and her family are now living. And so
as her disappearance makes the news, hikers who were on
Best per Peak on August first, or hiking that same
trail start calling in with their sidings of Sam. And

(21:27):
here is what they learn from these calls. So the
first sighting of Sam in the morning of her hike
is at around eleven thirty am. She passed by a
group of hikers from the YMCA while she was on
her way up to the summit. The next time Sam
has spotted is actually because someone happened to be taking
a video and she's spotted in the background. Wow. Yeah,

(21:48):
and she has walking sticks. It's a very rocky I
think that's what Kevin was referring to as the Scramble.
It's like a very rocky, very steep area with ice
and parts from glaciers, and so you can see her. Also,
Sam was dressed pretty lightly, so that was noticeable for people.
She often hiked in just a hoodie, in a sports spra,

(22:10):
sometimes a beanie.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
Whereas other people were wearing like full arms length garb
because it's cold or just to hide from the sun.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Both yeah and just I think in the hiking world,
which I'm not a part of, there's different levels of
preparedness that I think people find to be like the
safest way to go about it. So did she have
a pack a day? Yeah, she had a small pack
with her, which is where she kept the food that
she had packed for herself. That day. What time was

(22:39):
the video siding the video siding of Sam. The videos
taken maybe around lunchtime. So the final siding of Sam
that day comes from a witness who calls law enforcement
in Sanahomish County and says, I saw Sam. She was
sitting down eating lunch just below the summit. He says
she was eating a sean, which Kevin remembers that's what

(23:01):
she had packed that day, and he estimates that this
sighting was between two and three pm. He then watched
as Sam began her descent down a snow covered ridge
on the south side of the mountain that they're on. Hmm, yeah,
and so that's not the typical way back down. So

(23:22):
he was sort of confused by this and kind of
tried to wave to her. Maybe couldn't tell if she
fully waved back, and thought, you know, she's probably looking
for a private place to maybe use the restroom or
you know, we don't know.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Interesting, Yeah, So does that indicate that she had already
summitted and was on her way back down?

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah. I think that's sort of the way the investigation
interprets this, is that she had summitted and now she's
you know, the second half of her hike, and the
south side of this mountain is not the way back
to her car. But you know, I think it's just
one of the moments where you could replay it a
million times, but I think we all sort of assume

(24:06):
people have a plan. And so he calls that in
and that's her last known sighting. So this is what
police are learning now. I want to go back to
Pennsylvania in the moment that Lisa is finding out Sam
is missing. So on August second, So this is the

(24:29):
morning of August second, the search just beginning, the calls
are coming in. Lisa wakes up and immediately reaches for
her phone like so many of us do, and she
sees a Facebook post from Kevin and it says SOS
SOS missing hiker. And this is how Lisa learns of Sam.

(24:52):
He didn't call her, so this is like, yeah, Kevin,
rough rough choice. Lisa is, of course now like jolted
awake by this, like the worst adrenaline rush you could
ever have as a person. And she calls Kevin and
said that he reassured her that he was confident they
would find Sam. You know, the way she remembers it,

(25:12):
he did not say you need to rush out here.
We're gonna find her. She's probably just injured, and I
want to just spend one moment on this. Is that
in missing persons cases, which I've gone down a lot
of rabbit holes with missing person's cases, we've done a
lot of interviews, you really, when you speak to the
families recognized the logistical nightmare is when a loved one

(25:37):
goes missing miles from where you live. Because most of
us cannot just pick up and spend this indefinite amount
of time physically searching for someone, right, it takes a
lot of organizing and the means to do it financially.
And this is true for Lisa and for Ron. So
they had two large dogs. Ron had a job that

(25:58):
he would have to get time off of, and his
work was really accommodating, and they ended up, you know,
getting out there pretty quickly. But it's no small thing
to do that, and to buy these cross country tickets,
and you don't know how long you're going to be there, right,
there's so many unknowns and so on August third, Lisa
and Ron fly into Seattle and Kevin is driving them

(26:19):
around in Sam's car, which had never been impounded and
that always bothered Lisa about the investigation, is like, why
did you not impound her car? Lisa was really frustrated
by this. She was surprised because she said, she looked
down and I think it was in the cup holder.
She finds this sort of bracelet that she had gotten
Sam that she thought Sam would have been wearing. There

(26:42):
was also a beanie in the car that she thought
Sam would have been wearing. You know, she wondered, did
Sam make it back to her car and something happened
at the trailhead? Hmm? If so, though where were the
rest of her belonging? So why wouldn't they have found anything?

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah, like was there anything else in her car, like
her ID or anything else?

Speaker 2 (27:01):
No, No, that's all that there was that Lisa recalls,
But you know, the car was not looked at by
law enforcement. Yeah. So another day passes, there's no sign
of Sam. There are helicopters in the air, a search
and rescue team on the ground, detectives from Snowhomish County,
a massive search is happening. Lisa is barely sleeping. She

(27:23):
is sick with worry and just very confused about the
whole thing and something that started to bother Lisa she
spent more time in the Seattle area while the search
is happening. Is that Kevin and others were now referring
to Sam as his fiance. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
I noticed that in the news clip and was going
to ask you about that.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah. So, Lisa says that Sam never once mentioned an
engagement to Kevin or that he had proposed. That was
something that she felt was just odd. She thought that
Sam and her were close enough that if that had happened,
she would know about it.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
Did Kevin say that they had gotten engaged?

Speaker 2 (28:00):
You know, I don't know exactly what he said to
people or who even said that to people, but multiple people,
she said, were referring to Sam as his fiance and
she was just very confused by that because in her memory,
Sam was like thinking about leaving the relationship. Yeah. So
Lisa is not physically on the mountain looking for Sam.
She's asked to not be there because it's a danger

(28:23):
and they don't want to spend time helping someone else
off the mountain. Doesn't mean she doesn't visit the area,
but she's not like physically turning over rocks like that's
not part of this for her and that was at
the request of the Search and rescue in the Sheriff's office.
But things start getting a little sour between Lisa and
Kevin's family, who has also flown in. Lisa said that

(28:47):
Kevin made comments about how she wasn't doing enough, and
she just felt like that was so unfair because what
she didn't feel that she was going to be a
help physically searching on the mountain.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah, you don't want to get into a situation where
someone else is hurt on the mountain, or even him
going out there at night, that could have happened to him,
and then you would have two people that are potentially missing,
you know. So as the search is happening and I
imagine the days are going by, what do we know
about what she had in her day pack? You said

(29:17):
that she packed light, How much food did she have?
Were there water sources nearby? What was the timeline that
people guessed on how long she could survive out there?

Speaker 2 (29:27):
So I never got an answer on how long she
might have survived based on what she had. But I
think it was Kevin who estimated she had packed four
sandwiches because he had been with her that morning. And
Lisa also said that she felt like Sam was strong
and resilient and could have stayed alive even in a
very difficult or painful situation until she was found. She

(29:51):
really felt this because of how much time that Sam
had spent outdoors as a child and all the hikings
she'd done previously. But you know, Sam was dressed light,
and it does get cold up there at nighttime, even
in the summer. Obviously, the terrain leaves a lot of
risk of injury. So this was a concern. And by
August fifth, so she's been missing now less than a week.

(30:14):
Lisa said that there was already a different energy with
law enforcement and search and rescue, and she recalled a
moment where a police sergeant told her that Sam was
likely dead and she should go home.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Wow, And Lisa was angered by this and obviously sad,
but at the time, you know, she's fighting to keep
the search going for Sam. You know, you don't have
time to sit around and just like be sad. So
Lisa's angered by this and tells this police sergeant, no,
like Sam is young and healthy, and if she's lost
on the mountain, she could still be alive. She could

(30:49):
just be injured. And while all of this is happening,
someone had set up a gofund me to help with
this search for Sam. This was not at Lisa's request,
but she is then glad to have funds to continue
to stay there in Seattle and to make later additional trips.
And Kevin, while the search is happening, is putting together

(31:10):
these zip block bags of food with notes to Sam
and sort of him and others are scattering them about
the mountain, and you know, there's a lot of wildlife.
There's also just the thought of, like, if Sam is
moving around and finding these packs of food to stay alive,

(31:31):
that seems pretty unlikely because if we haven't found her,
she could probably be injured and stationary. Is this a
good use of time and resources? Is this even safe
to have these civilian people out on this dangerous train
dropping off zip blocks in case she comes upon one
of them. This was sort of like I think Lisa

(31:53):
saw it as performative, but I think that going back
to what we were talking about earlier, it's like, you
really don't know what you do in that situation, and
everyone responds to these things differently, and the reality is
is that none of them could do anything search and
rescue teams were looking and what they could actually do
was so limited, and I feel like for some people

(32:15):
it's so hard to be in that position where you
can't do anything. So it sounds to me like one
of those things where they just created something that they
could do so they could feel like they were doing something. Yeah,
and Lisa, in the same vein made pancakes for search
and rescue workers because she's like, well, what can I
do to keep people motivated, to keep people feeling like

(32:36):
a part of this team with this mission to bring
home Sam. And I remember her just like this was
a moment in one of our conversations where she really
became very emotional. It's like she could sort of feel
going back in time, and at this a week missing,
the hope starting to dwindle, and as you know, Sam's
mother just wanting to sort of pull that back up

(32:58):
and bring back that hopeful energy because all you want
is people so determined to find her and to not
give up. And so at a week in that's when
sort of the demeanor starts to shift around her disappearance.
And even though Lisa and I were talking about this
many years after Sam's disappearance, she still would note a

(33:19):
lot how surreal it felt to talk about Sam and
know that she was still missing after all of these years.
Like Lisa really had this hope that Sam would be found.
And I'll get into why that is. So all of
this tension is brewing with Kevin's family, particularly now about
the money that's been raised in the gofund me to

(33:41):
help with expenses. You know, Ron is unable to work
while he's traveling to Washington State. They have two large
dogs at home that need to be cared for. Lisa
just felt really uncomfortable with the gofundmes and maybe a
lack of transparency or a perceived lack of transparency about
how that money was spent. She did get some of

(34:02):
that money for their expenses, but things got really muddy
between her and Kevin's family, including Kevin. But she was
just her utmost concern was finding Sam. Yeah, and I
imagine that they searched the South Pass or the south
slope where someone had seen her going down, you know,
but there's so much to search, There's so much to search. Yeah,

(34:24):
and you know, this search becomes the biggest and most
extensive search in Stahomish County history. It included fourteen dog teams, helicopters,
drone operators, Sheriff's marine unit searched spot of lake which
is on that hike. There were seventy searchers on foot.
It was massive and so the search formally ends on

(34:47):
August twenty third, twenty eighteen. Sam is now twenty two
days missing. Yeah, a little over three weeks and the
search turned up no sign of her. So Lisa started
to wonder if Sam had been kidnapped, and in fact,
in that moment when she rolled over and read the
Facebook post from Kevin, the first time she realizes that

(35:09):
anything has happened. She said, she had this intuition that
Sam had been taken in that moment, and that little
voice that Lisa heard, you know, maybe her intuition or
whatever telling her that is something that she really held
on to and that she really kind of molled over
more as the search didn't turn up any sign of Sam,
that she.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Could have been kidnapped on her way down the trail.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Perhaps, Yeah, I don't think she really knew, but she
just questioned why the bracelet was in the car, why
the beanie was in the car, and it just gave
her a lot of pause, but law enforcement was not
looking in the direction of a kidnapping. And I haven't
spoken with a detective on the case, but I can
understand that you have a missing hiker. She's seen on

(35:51):
the hike, and there are a lot of people calling
in that say that they saw her on the way up.
There's no one calling in saying they saw her on
the way down. Yeah, except for this person who says
that they saw her going down the south side of
the ridge, which he didn't understand why she would go
that direction. So I had a brief conversation with a
representative from Snohomish County and she did tell me, and

(36:15):
this I think is very strange that I think as
far as today, but definitely when we spoke, that Sam
is the only missing high ground vesper Peak who has
never been found. And I want to say, I don't
know what happened to Sam, but I hope that the
search for her continues. And you know, personally, I don't
think it particularly matters what I think, But what has

(36:37):
always stuck with me is all the people that jumped
in to say where they had seen her, and that
none of those people saw her coming back. And you know,
I think that it's easy to underestimate mother nature and
the wilderness wildlife up there. I don't know, we've all
done things that maybe we shouldn't have or put ourselves

(36:59):
in more dangerous situations. So Kevin has also continued searching,
So Lisa has continued sort of virtually at this point.
Before she passed posting a lot about Sam on her
Facebook page. She hired her own drone operators to run
more image searches that didn't turn up anything, but she
never stopped looking. When the search ended, it didn't end

(37:21):
anything for Lisa and Kevin also continued searching, and he
searched physically, and he actually got involved with a private
search and rescue group. I guess you could call them,
a guy by the name of Bud Carr, who I
did speak with at one point, and together they actually
went out searching for another missing hiker whose name is

(37:42):
Rachel Lacaduke, and they ended up finding her remains. Wow. Yeah,
so it's a crazy story. Rachel was also hiking in
this area, different trail than Sam was on, and in
October of twenty nineteen, she's heading up this trail. She
has the intention of spending one night by herself up there,

(38:05):
and a storm is coming in and she runs into
these hikers on her way up who are heading back down,
and they're like, the weather's really turning, you should head back,
and she doesn't, and she vanishes. And so in August
of twenty twenty one, Kevin Dar's and Bud Carr actually
find her remains.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
You know, the fact that Kevin has gone on to
look for Sam around Mount Vesper and also joined teams
to look for missing hikers, it kind of is one
small thing that shows you how much this clearly impacted
him in his life and obviously impacted Lisa's life, and
I'm sure also Ron and Sam's brothers as well. I mean,

(38:50):
there's no right way to grieve someone, right And obviously,
as you talked about, sounds like Kevin and Lisa didn't
have the best relationship after this happened. You know that
that makes sense to me. But yeah, I think it's
cool that Kevin has spent his time helping find other hikers.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, and this person, Rachel, who remains he and Bud
actually ended up finding. You know, she wasn't far off
of the trail, but it just didn't take her being
that far off of the trail for her to go
completely unseen, her remains to go completely unseen for years. Yeah,
because it is very densely forested area boulders. I don't

(39:32):
know what elevation she was at, but at the lower
elevations in these mountain ranges in Washington, it's almost like
a rainforest environment. So that's sort of a crazy part
of the story. But I want to talk about just
a couple of the theories before I wrap this up,
which is that Sam on her Instagram posted a lot
of pictures taking sort of cliff side selfies, very dangerous

(39:53):
looking selfies, and this is a theory that perhaps she
got too close to the edge and fell into places
that would be extremely difficult to search. And I had
an off the record conversation with a member of the
search and rescue team who told me that at the
base of a lot of these peaks or cliff edges

(40:13):
is still snow and huge rocks, and you could fall
in a very small area and be impossible to find,
and it wouldn't be safe to send someone in to
look for you, and even if it was, it would
be incredibly difficult to search all of those possible areas
you could maybe search some of them, but could you
search all of them? Maybe not? And so Lisa never

(40:36):
felt Exam would have done that. She felt Exam's judgment
was much better than maybe an accidental fall because of
taking a cliff side selfie. But it is one theory
that's sort of out there. And then of course there's well,
why haven't we found any trace of her? You know,
because if she has these walking sticks, I'm sure she
put them down before she took a picture, you know, right,

(40:56):
where are the walking sticks? Strange? Yeah, that doesn't add up?
Does not up? Why is the beanie in her car?
Why is this bracelet in her car that she would
have been wearing?

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Do they know in the video was she wearing a beanie?

Speaker 2 (41:08):
So it's hard to tell, but yes, it could have
been a hood could have been a beanie, okay, Yeah,
and then the issue of like why nothing, you know,
why nothing? And the wildlife in this area now, going
back to those go bags Kevin was spreading around the
mountain for her in case she found them, those were

(41:28):
what do you call it, like wildlife got.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
To those ripped open, eaten, ripped open and gone. Yeah,
and that's why you have bear boxes like when you're backpacking, right,
that bears can't get into.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yeah, another reason I don't hike. So so the issue
of wildlife. If someone goes missing, and someone is injured,
or they pass away and their remains and their belongings
are out there, wildlife could really spread those things out
and make it even harder to find. Yeah, that's one

(41:57):
possible reason she hasn't been found. So you know, this
doesn't have a happy ending, this doesn't have resolution. My
hope in telling this story is not that I'm going
to break the case wide open, but to just keep
Sam's story in people's minds, because she does deserve to
be found. And you know, there's a lot of sort

(42:20):
of Reddit warriors saying she was over confident, she shouldn't
have been hiking alone, she was underprepared, she was underdressed.
But like we've all done things we shouldn't have done.
So even if you believe that, just it means nothing
to me, like, let's find her.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Yeah, I'm so glad that you told this story today.
There was a lot that I didn't know about it.
You have sort of mentioned speaking with Lisa over the years,
and I knew that you were working at one point
and turning this into like a multi part series that
didn't end up happening. And I just want to point
out again, there's so many stories like this, but you're

(42:58):
telling this story, and you talked with Lisa for hours
upon hours upon hours over years about her missing daughter,
and this was such an important story for her to
get out to the world because we, as we've talked
about before, when time passes and people pass away, like
the memories of people can get lost, and she doesn't
want that to happen with Sam. Obviously, there's people still

(43:20):
alive who love Sam very much, but it's important that
we keep talking about these things because you never know
what might spark and someone who might hear it could
lead to discovery of her.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yeah. Absolutely, and Lisa still had hope. She never lost
that hope. And cancer is brutal and she may have
lost energy and the ability to continue searching, but like,
she never lost hope. Yeah. As time went on and
Lisa didn't get answers, she would meet with psychics and

(43:54):
she would take emails from people who said that they
had sightings at the Trailhead possibly being abducted. And I
looked into those and wasn't able to find anything that
I felt like was compelling enough to really dig into.
But you know, Lisa is not the only person who
doesn't think Sam's on the mountain.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
Okay, yeah, well thanks for telling that story.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
Yeah, I'm glad that I finally had a chance to
tell it.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
Okay, So when I knew you were going to be
telling this story, I wanted to also tell a story
of someone going missing out of nature in a national park.
And this also takes place in the North Cascades. It's
just outside of North Kestcage National Park in Washington actually,
and it happened in July of twenty twenty four last year.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
Oh wow, so recent.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
Yeah, a man named Robert Shock set off on the
Hannigan trailhead on July thirty.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
First.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
It's interesting the timing also in July, Yeah, which makes
sense because when I was looking up that National park,
there's a range they tell people to visit. It's like
between late June and early September.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
And let me just everyone who visits Seattle in the
summer is like, most beautiful place I've ever seen. Yeah,
that's the moment. Yeah, it's gorgeous. Yees, I was looking
at pictures. I've never been to the Cascades National Park.
I don't think I've been up to Washington, and it's
just stunning. And the pictures of this area where Robert
Shack was, I was like blown away. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
So he was thirty nine years old at the time,
and he was an ultra marathon runner, which you know,
a marathon is twenty six point two miles, and an
ultra marathon runner runs the races are like anywhere from
fifty miles to one hundred miles. Good for them, just
not the same kind of person. I am, no, you know, no, no,
but yeah, I mentioned that because he was going on
a twenty mile trail run. But in context, he's used

(45:43):
to running like way longer than that. Okay, but it's
a trail run, you know, there's elevation. So he similarly
to the story you told Sam brought like a day pack.
Robert packed light. He was wearing a day pack with
he had a map. He was wearing shorts and running
no shirt because I think he just wanted to keep

(46:04):
things as light as possible for the long run. But
he also brought with him his dog, a chocolate lab
named Freddie.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
Cute.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
Yeah, and Robert was really familiar with the North Cascades region.
He was kind of an outdoorsman. He hiked and camped
regularly in the area, so it was like he was
some newbie who had never been out on a trail before.
He was described as a wanderer and a musician, originally
from Blaine, Washington, but he actually didn't have a permanent

(46:33):
address at the time. He lived in his van with Freddie.
He was kind of a wanderer and it seemed like
he just lived that sort of alternative lifestyle. He wasn't
that interested in the classic American dream. He didn't want
the nine to five. He liked to sort of roam
around and do his thing.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
I mean, I don't like the nine to five e there,
but I don't like to roam. Yeah, I just want
to be in my house. Van life is a certain
kind of life. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
And I looked at pictures of him. He's got, you know,
long beard, long hair, and Freddy the chocolate lab is
really cute. So he had been to this area many times,
but it had been a couple of years. And the
North Cascades National Park is huge. There's about five hundred
thousand acres of land, and this part where he was

(47:19):
was very north, almost to Canada. He was close to
Copper Mountain and the Chilliwack River which runs through there,
so it's super far north, and you know, he was
feeling kind of adventurous that day, and so he planned
a route that would combine a couple of trails and
would be a twenty mile sort of makeshift loop, which

(47:40):
really isn't that uncommon. If you're used to hiking, you
might not want to just do one trail, but if
you're familiar with trailheads and trail signs, it's not that
hard to say, well, they'll just turn left here and
then I'll connect to this trail. So that was his plan.
But what he didn't realize or had forgot and I
don't know, is that there had been fires in the

(48:02):
area a couple of years before, and so some of
the land where he was going, like in this route,
was technically closed off and the trails had been destroyed
by fire, and there had been some regrowth that had
been a couple of years. But when that happens, the
trail is not the same. There's not even really a trail.
It has to be restored. So you know, we set

(48:24):
off on the path and he never returned to the trailhead.
His mom, Jan Thompson, lived in North Carolina at the time,
and she obviously knew her son, knew he was an
adventurous guy and would go out on these long trail runs.
And she reportedly spoke with him on the phone the
night before and asked him to call her when he
got done with his run, and he never called.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
She didn't worry too much.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Because she just thought, well, he's really self reliant, he'll
call me soon. But then on August third, Freddy the
dog was found on the east side of the Chilliwack
River alone. So his dog was found first. And the
Chilliwac River is this big, rushing, cold river, not something

(49:08):
you can just easily cross. So the Watcom County Humane
Society called Jan and told her that they had found Freddie.
So then Jan reported Robert missing. Okay, and you know,
Freddie was fine. He had one sore paw, but he
was doing just fine and he fully recovered, thank goodness,

(49:28):
Thank goodness. So then Jan said that when she reported
him missing, a deputy called her back within minutes and
let her know they had located Robert's car at the trailhead.
It makes me wonder if they had already sort of
been looking after finding the dog. They found his car
with the window halfway down on the passenger's side, and
his wallet was also in his car. His mother would

(49:51):
later say that the deputy who called her a thought
that that was a sign that Robert left and didn't
plan to come back. That was how he interpreted it.
Then he left his wallet in the car. Yeah, it's
so strange to me, because like, what's he going to
spend his money on a trail, Like, you don't need
your wallet. I don't know if he thought it was
like I'm going into the woods and never returning kind

(50:12):
of thing.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
I mean, I don't know. I'm a dog person, don't
have one right now, But you wouldn't bring your dog
with you on sort of a final journey, no, especially
if you're a dog lover, if you don't want Yeah,
I would never do that to Freddy No, not to
chocolate lab Freddy No. So Jan did not buy that,
She said, this is not unusual behavior for my son.

(50:35):
He probably just didn't want to bring his wallet on
the run, left it in the car, left the window down,
like that's just sort of normal, and she always believed, no,
we'll find time, he'll come back. So the Wockcom County
Sheriff's Office, deputies, and National Park rangers performed detailed ground
searches over three days in August. On August sixteenth, the

(50:55):
US Border Patrol flew over the Chiliwak Basin looking for
him helicopter, but he wasn't found and so the search
was called off. You know, this story does have a
happy ending, I'll just tell you right now. But the
fact that the search was called off and I'll get
into that later, but like they did a thorough search

(51:17):
and then the search was called off, that's got to
feel so terrible just having the search called off like
that decision would feel horrible. Yeah, But Robert was found
in like a wild turn of events, and he was
found after being out in the wilderness for thirty days,
and the way he was found was sort of random happenstance.

(51:40):
And I'm going to get into it, but I'm going
to just run you through Robert's account of what happened
after he was found. So he said he started off
on the trail that day July thirty first, and all
was well, he ran seven miles on the trail at
which point it intersects with the Chiliwac River, And I
think this was kind of interesting. I had never heard

(52:02):
of this, but I guess there are these cable cars
that are suspended over the river that you can use
to cross it. Did you know this? No, I don't
go I don't go up there.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
I have been backpacking in hiking, but I've never been
in a place where they have this.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Where you just self operated. Yeah, go above the I
looked up.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
I actually found a video on YouTube of someone crossing
in the cable car crossing the Chilliwack River. I don't
know if it was the same crossing point.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
No, I don't know that a cable car that I'm
operating myself is all that reassuring to me. Like I'd
probably just be like, oh, I can turn around now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
I mean, I'll show you the video. It's like a
metal sort of box without a lid, like a metal
basket that you would get in. It looks like it
fit maybe one or two people. That's connected to a
cable that runs across the river. And then you have
a little pulley and you're pulling yourself across this rushing
river below. No, and it's just like it's not like
there's someone there operating it. You just hike up there

(53:01):
and then you're like, here we go.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
That's so much worse than I thought I was picturing
that like tram and palm springs. Oh no, it's not
even that fancy. And I don't even like that.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
Yeah, yeah, it's like for hikers because you can't cross
the river, so you just like climb these stairs, get
into this basket, go across.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Okay, everyone, let this be a sign you cannot cross
the river.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
So Robert and Freddie get into the cable car and
he pulls them across the river. So it's after they
cross the river that things sort of start to go wrong,
and Robert starts to get disoriented. He's starting to get
into some of that area that had been burned and
then regrew, so I don't know if he knows that
it had been burned, but he's sort of like things
don't quite look like they should. He sees a sign,

(53:44):
a trail sign that is pointing north, indicating that the
Canadian border is twenty miles away, but for some reason,
he feels like the sign has been tampered with or
changed because he needs to go south, but for whatever reason,
he thinks this sign has been like switched backwards. So
he goes in the direction of the sign, which he

(54:05):
thinks is south but is actually north. And this is
not going on any path now, it's just sort of
wandering out into the wilderness.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
A backward sign like in a cartoon where it like
swaps and you're like, oh, no, totally, what a nightmare.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
And so he just wandered. He starts wandering north into
the wilderness, which is yeah, like heavily forested. And is
this where Freddie turns back? He's like, no, well he
actually sends his dog back. Yeah. I mean it gets confusing.
And he gave like a couple of interviews when he
first got back, but then hasn't really spoken about it.

(54:41):
I think he said he was going to like write
a book or something, but it's unclear exactly what was
going through his mind. But he does, I think within
the first day send Freddie home. He's like, Freddy, go home.
So Freddie obeys, and Freddy trots back, but can't cross
back for the river right because he can't get into

(55:02):
the pulley. He can't pully himself across the river. Oh
my gosh, so freddie Head's back and then that's where
he's found later by the river and Robert I think
knew like he could have turned around, he had enough energy,
he could have turned around, but he thought again that
he was going the right way and that he just
needed to find the path and that he could do it.

(55:24):
This feels kind of familiar to me. I mean, I
think that if you were a hiker and you're on
a path, like it doesn't feel good to have to
turn around, Like you wouldn't turn around unless you really
felt like you needed to. I went on a backpacking
trip with a couple of friends a few years ago,
and at one point we lost the path, but like
we knew the direction we were going, and we also

(55:47):
had like all trails app on our phones. But you know,
there was like an hour where we were kind of
like wandering, and the idea of turning back after you
have this heavy pack and you've been hiking all day,
it just feels like defeat that you're like, no, we
can just find I'm sure we'll just find it here
in a second. And then we did, right, So I
think a lot of people have that mindset when they're

(56:09):
out hiking. But he was never going to find the
path because he had turned the wrong way.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
So and the wildfires. Yeah, there was no trail. Really,
he's just wandering north.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Nightmare.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
So then at some point he takes off his shoes
to wash them in a river he finds and they
wash away, so he's barefoot. Now it's hard to sort
of comprehend. So he's barefooting, doesn't have a shirt, He's
just wearing shorts. Oh right, he has no shirt. He
has no short time days, no shirt, Yeah, just shorts.

(56:45):
And he has a little tiny like backpack, like day pack.
But the details on what happens next are sort of blurry.
He does have a phone but doesn't have service, and
then like day two, the phone dies. He says, by
day three he's starting to worry.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
Okay, this is one difference between me and Robert. I'm
starting to worry hour one hour one hour, one hour.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
One that I'm not on a trail, and I'm like,
there doesn't even seem to be a trail. I'm like,
maybe I need to worry here. Yeah, I think that
points to how much of an outdoors man he was.
He's like, I'll figure it out. I'm barefoot. It's fine.
But he's growing more and more disoriented and hungry on
day three, so now he's like off the path and
starting to feel disoriented, so like, how can he even

(57:32):
make his way back? He said, he ate some berries
off of some bushes and then found a large mushroom
and knew that it was a risk to eat it
because it could be poisonous, but he was like, I
have to do this because I have no food and
I'm gonna die. So he ate it and it was fine.
It wasn't poisonous and probably ended up saving his life

(57:54):
because it gave him like more sustenance.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
So he starts heading back, trying to retrace his steps
because he realizes now that he's in like a really
bad situation, and he like hurts his toe or hurts
his foot because he's just like barefoot, but he's super disoriented.
At one point, he remembers helicopters circling and he's yelling
and waving his hands, but you know, they didn't see him.

(58:18):
It's like, you're so tiny and there's trees everywhere. It's
interesting thinking about that because the US Border Patrol was
looking for him by helicopter on August sixteenth, So that
means he would have been out there sixteen days at
that point, right, which indicates that he was still walking
around and like coherent.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Wow, it's like, if you're not in a clearing, how
can they see you?

Speaker 1 (58:43):
You'd have to be in a clearing. Yeah, that's what's
so different about that versus like hiking in California. There's
a lot of just sort of open space desert type
of hiking where someone could potentially see you easier.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
Yeah, and even those like heat detector cameras. I wonder
if they had those. I've heard about those. But wow,
that's sixteen days is so long. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
So he finally is making his way back, he's able
to retrace his steps, and then at some point he
just collapses on a river bank and he can't get
up because he's so tired and he's so malnourished. He
turns out that he was eleven miles from the trailhead
at that point, and only half a mile from something
called a horse Ford.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
What is that? I thought you might know that. I mean,
it sounds like the way I hear the word or
dirve in my head.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
Oh well, I thought as a horse girl growing up,
you might know. But I looked up. It's just like
a place where horses can cross a river, because I
went in pretty little circles. Okay, Yeah, so I guess
there was a crossing point okay, where horses and maybe
other people could cross about half a mile because remember

(59:52):
the river is like not really crossable, right, So he
lays there for days and yells for help and no
one comes, and he said he slept during the day
with the warmth of the sun, but it was too
cold at night, like it had a risk of getting
hypothermia because it would get down into the forties and
there were rainstorms that were cold. He says he was

(01:00:14):
awake for the entire endeavor, and that he was probably
laying on the river bank for more than a week.
What he thinks he was awake for a week. He
claims he was cognizant for all of it, and that
he just laid there for over a week. And then
he remembers laying on the river bank one day and
thinking that it was going to be his last day alive,

(01:00:35):
and so he thought, I'm going to try one more
time and yell for help, and so he just starts
yelling as much as he can. He's so weak and
lo and beholds someone hears him. It's like finding the
needle in the haystack. There is this nonprofit organization called
Pacific Northwest Trail Association, and they helped maintain and repair
the trails. And there was a group of volunteers who

(01:00:57):
were returning to camp after working out on the trails
after a ten hour day. They had been like hauling
boulders and doing other like difficult manual labor, and they
were headed back and this guy named Miles Cottingham, one
of the trail workers, was sort of walking a little
bit of ways from the rest of the people for
some reason, and that's probably how he heard Robert Schock's calls,

(01:01:24):
because you think about the noise of the river, you
think about if you're talking with people.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
So he's like, I thought I heard something, and got
the attention of his crewmates and we're like, we should
go check this out. I guess he must have thought
like that sounds like a human But you think you're
working a ten hour day and then you're like, well,
let's go investigate this thing over here.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Now there's one person with him, like, I really want
to be done, I'm ready.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
For dinner, and we just it's probably like a deer,
you know. Robert said he thought it was a pack
of wolves coming at him because he was so disoriented,
and then he realized it was people and they found him.
They called for help. They covered him with their jackets
because he was so cold. They gave him little bits
of food, but he was not in good condition. He

(01:02:13):
was fifty pounds underweight and in shock and very close
to death. But he was helicoptered out of there and
he ended up recovering.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Yeah, so that's the story.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
Really. So he was out there thirty days, most of
which he had no shoes, and he also had only
a little backpack, so he ran out of food very quickly.
Oh my gosh, that is so scary. That is like
a nightmare. Nightmare.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
He was able to drink water from the river. I
guess he found water. But yeah, and then he ate
that mushroom.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
I hate mushrooms really, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
I love them, but like the idea of eating a
mushroom in the wild is so scary because you have
no idea, right, I could send you on a real ride. Yeah. Wow,
So he's alive and well he's alive, and well that's great.
Another thing I wanted to mention there was a Facebook
post from the Pacific North Trail Association PNTA director. He
made a post after all this happened, I think, in

(01:03:11):
response to some people were giving them a hard time
forever calling the search off because they ended up finding him,
and other people were also saying it was stage. I mean,
people just say whatever they want on the internet, And
so he made a post. He wrote, p and TA
crews are made up of youth and young adults, many
of whom come from trail side communities along the length
of the p and while most are just getting their

(01:03:33):
foot in the door along the path to a career
in public land management, they are hardworking, highly productive, and
ultra committed. While we provide some training, YadA YadA, there
is nothing that can fully prepare anyone to handle the
mental and emotional burden of providing aid to someone like
Robert under the circumstances that they found him in.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
I mean, I want to like acknowledge that because that
wasn't something I thought of right away, but I think
it was pretty traumatic to the people who found him,
who were these young volunteers, and his body was in
the pretty dire, extreme state, and like he was so
close to death and they did save his life, but
it was like pretty traumatic for them, I think, And

(01:04:17):
you know, he also just said, these are professional searches.
You know, we did a thorough search, and there was
no failure on the search and rescue teams on their side.
The fact that like he was in a place where
they wouldn't even know to look, you know, eleven miles
from the trail is so far when you're thinking about
like that one he's going in the opposite direction that

(01:04:39):
he intended to go in, yeah, and two it's like
there had been these fires that made everything harder to navigate.
And three it's I mean, there's so many The list
goes on, but like just the forest out there are
so dense you could be one hundred feet and not
have any way of like really seeing or getting closer
to finding someone totally. And so so the fact that

(01:05:00):
he was found was just really amazing and kind of
a just happenstance. Yeah, especially because I imagine if he's
this marathon runner, he's in pretty good physical shape, You're
not probably not carrying a lot of extra body fat,
and that is something that you know, if you're going
without food, you would really be relying on. And the
fact that his body was able to sustain thirty days

(01:05:24):
in the wilderness is like mind boggling, totally mind boggling.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
Well, I'm glad that he's okay, and I'm glad that
Freddie got his dad back. Me too.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
Yeah, Freddie's the real hero of this story.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
I mean, wow, no one would know that he was
missing until Freddie was found. I know. Yeah, interesting that
he sent Freddie back. Maybe he knew that. Maybe he thought, well,
Freddy's microchipped or has a collar, and someone will be like,
this guy should have his dog. And I mean, my
last dog would have never left my side. He'd feel
like we're in this together, but only because he's like

(01:05:57):
disobedient and anxious, so it would have been useless to me.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
But wow, I wonder if Freddy knew it was a
dangerous situation and so he was like going to find help.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
Yeah, what an obedient dog. Yeah, sometimes I feel like
animals just know. Yeah, Well, I'm glad that we were
able to end on a happier note. And yeah, I'm
going to continue not hiking.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
Yeah, I mean, I will still hike, but I'm gonna
be very careful and I don't hike alone. That's good
because I'm too scared.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
You should be. Okay, I do have a wreck this week. Great.
It's called Petty Crimes. It's a podcast that investigates real
life interpersonal drama to uncover who is guilty of a
petty crime. Oh my gosh, that sounds so good. It's
so good. It's like lighthearted. One of the hosts was

(01:06:52):
an SNL writer and the other is a retired model.
Partry crime, mostly comedy, completely petty and yeah. They are
just so great. And every time I listen to them,
I'm like, oh my mood is lifted. I love it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Are they doing interviews or they're just talking about other
people's stories.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
They're the episodes I've listened to. They're just telling stories
people have sent them.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
Very cool. Yeah, okay, I'll definitely listen. My recommendation, I
can't remember if we've talked about this or if you've
watched this or not. I think my brother recommended this
documentary to me. It's not really true crime, but adjacent
in some ways. It's called Renfair.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Never heard of it?

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Oh my gosh, it's so interesting. It is a three
part documentary that follows the Texas Renaissance Festival and the founder.
It's in this small town in Texas and essentially I
think it's its own town. The founder is this really
bizarro guy who moved there and sort of bought a

(01:07:54):
town and then created the I think it's the largest
ren fair in the US. And there's a segment of
people who live there full time. Do they like full
times the dress? Yeah, not all of them, but some
of them. And the documentary is basically the guy who

(01:08:15):
started it, who goes by King George. He is getting
older and he's trying to decide who he's gonna make
the next director of the Renaissance Fair, and it is
like a battle for the crown. It is sort of
like what was that succession except Renaissance Fair And it

(01:08:38):
is so interesting and bizarre. There's also some like seedy,
sort of underbelly type of stuff that's going on, which
will lead into the true crime part of it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
It's not a true.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
Crime documentary at all. It's just an interesting documentary about
the Texas Renaissance Festival.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
I know absolutely nothing about Renaissance fairs other than that
they exist, so I can't wait to watch it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
It's really really interesting. And then it made me start
looking into the Renaissance Fair a little bit more after
I watched it, and I found this podcast. I don't
know that I should recommend it because I actually haven't
listened to it yet, but it's called Crime Waves Renaissance Texas.
It's all about the Texas Renaissance Festival and they cover
multiple crimes that happen there throughout the ages, like there

(01:09:22):
was a murder that happened there, and there's been multiple
accusations of sexual assault.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
Oh god.

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):
And so I'm not recommending it, but if you listen
to it and like it, let me know, because I'll
probably listen to it as well.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
I'll probably listen. Yeah, well, thanks for listening. That's our
show today. We'll see you next week. Bye. If you
have a story for us, we would love to hear it.
Our email is The Knife at exactly rightmedia dot com,
or you can follow us on Instagram at the Knife
podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
This has been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced
by me Hannah Smith and me Patia Eating. Our producers
are Tom Briefogel and Lexis Samarosi. This episode was mixed
by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgareff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.