Searching for a Miracle

The race against time to find my dad

The descent into dread started with a calm phone call from my brother John on Saturday evening.

“‘Chele, don’t get upset, but I have some bad news . . . Dad’s missing. He never showed up at the cabin today.”

It was Labor Day weekend, and neither one of us was in Pennsylvania for the end-of-summer family picnic. Aunt Lynda had been expecting my father around lunchtime at the family’s holiday house about a half-hour’s drive from our Pennsylvania hometown. 

To get there, you take a two-lane mountain road winding through deep forests along a sparkling creek. There’s no cell phone service for many miles. 

Family members had been looking for Dad all afternoon, after he was a no-show and didn’t return phone calls. He wasn’t at home, and neither was his car. There were no clues to his whereabouts. 

John’s neighbor in Las Vegas is an airline pilot who helped him hop on a red-eye within a couple of hours. I booked the first flight out of San Diego the next day. Coincidentally I was visiting California, but I live in Tokyo.

There was a big turnout to find Dad the next day, while I was on an airplane. My brother’s best friends immediately leapt into action – one even came from Pittsburgh to help the search effort. Family and friends scoured the road to the cabin, looking for signs of an accident. They took kayaks up and down the creek, squinting through the trees in hopes of seeing something. Local police put out a missing person alert and sent a drone and a helicopter to investigate. 

But the forest is too dense. There were no signs of an accident. Everything was ominously ordinary, with no hint of what happened. 

Miles of greenery, blue skies, and no sign of my dad while driving on a quiet country road.

I arrived in Philadelphia that afternoon with more than three hours’ drive ahead of me. Emotionally, I felt numb but strangely focused on getting to my destination. The first time I passed a digital road sign displaying the missing person alert, I couldn’t believe I was seeing the description of Dad’s car. By the 6th or 7th time I saw it, it felt like the cruel drumbeat of a truth I didn’t want to hear. 

I’m sure I wasn’t much help once I arrived, aside from moral support. I talked to the police and then spent time looking through Dad’s house for anything unusual. Since I had just visited a month earlier, I could tell at a glance that nothing seemed off. 

The night was punishing. John and I stayed over at Mom’s house, dutifully eating dinner even though we weren’t hungry, dutifully going to bed even though we knew we wouldn’t sleep. We were all on edge after a fruitless day.

Lying in bed, I was fighting the urge to break down in tears. It was a battle between despair and hope. I thought of all the people praying for Dad. I soothed myself by sending him thoughts of comfort instead of dwelling on my own fear. I saw visions of the forest at night, ink-black branches streaked across muted light beams from an occasional car. 

Where are you?

He could have been anywhere, but it felt clear that he was out there, alone, in the dark.

John and his friends were out searching on foot from early the next morning. Others looked on side roads and nearby rural routes. Meanwhile, I made phone calls, talked to neighbors, and stopped by local businesses to inquire about security camera footage. It was Labor Day, and it felt like the whole world was off on vacation.

When John and I regrouped that afternoon, we still had no timeline for Dad after the cell tower last detected his phone around lunchtime on the day he was heading to the cabin. We called the police again and the officer suggested we organize a search party with a different person assigned to each mile of the route. 

If you imagine this kind of manhunt happening, you might assume it would all fall into place. But in reality, if you don’t have the resources to do it yourself, it will not happen. We had already called upon our community, and plenty of folks helped out, but as the day was dwindling, we started to feel more and more alone, more desperate.

John headed out once more, deciding to travel further afar. What if Dad had a mini-stroke, got confused, and kept driving? (Dad had a stroke many years ago.) We started to think of more unusual possibilities. 

Where is he? I need to find him today, safe and sound. I need you to show me where he is today. 

Not knowing whether he had any food, drink, or diabetes medicine in the car, I started to wonder how long a person could survive with nothing. The bright rays of afternoon sun were starting to soften into a golden glow.

Over the years, I’ve done so much work to develop deeper patience and inner strength, but this situation was different. Of course, patience is fine if time is open-ended. When life is on the line and time is running out, it’s impossible to be patient. 

Hang in there, Dad. I’m coming to you. 

I called my husband Jason to talk it out. I had no idea what I should be doing with myself. We chatted about what would be the most boring, obvious thing to happen: Dad missed the turn to the cabin (which is easy to do even when you know where it is) and tried to turn around. 

I felt very strongly that he was closer than we knew, perhaps hidden in plain sight. So many people had already looked along Route 87. Would it be a waste of time to look again?

The idea of “third time’s the charm” kept popping into my mind. Jason told me that I should follow my intuition and go searching some more if that’s what I wanted to do. I hung up and called my mom to see if she’d ride along with me. 

We drove many miles up the route past our cabin until cell service picked up again. If Dad’s phone had been charged and turned on, it would have been detected up there. But it wasn’t. I was sure he hadn’t gone that far.

At one point, I stopped to look around where we spotted a dead deer on the road, and a farmer came over to ask if I needed help. When I explained the situation, he said there are a lot of sketchy roads around there. Maybe Dad made a wrong turn. 

Heading back to the cabin, the road was lined with guardrails. There were very few places he could have turned off. The sun was getting lower and it was shining in my eyes. I wanted to scream. 

We need to find Dad today! 

We were almost back to the road to the cabin. There had to be something right around there. But where? We didn’t see anything on Google Maps.

We slowed down and saw a short break in the guardrail. Mom, is that a road?

I stopped and backed up. She ran out and looked down over the edge. Yes, it was a road – barely. It was a steep, rocky, private property road. Incredibly, there was a small pullout a few yards away where I could park.

I started walking briskly down the trail, trying not to trip on big rocks. I had no idea where I was heading. There was nothing but deep greenery and dappled sunlight ahead. 

And then: Beep. Beep. Beep.

The sure, steady honks of a car horn blasted out from the forest in the direction of the creek. What was that?

My pulse sped up and I took huge steps downhill, starting to yell.

Hello? Hello? 

A bit later, I heard it again. There is a car down there.

Hello? I put my full power into making my voice cut through the trees. 

At some point, I thought the car beeped back in response.

Hello! I’m coming for you! 

Beep beep!

Oh my god, what is happening? I heard it so close by, but I couldn’t see it.

The trail emptied out at the creek, and I was in disbelief. A dead end — now what?

Hello?!

Beep!

The sound was right there, just yards away, on the other side of a jungle. A wall of dense bushes blocked my view. The only way there is through!

I’m lucky I didn’t get bitten by a snake, shredded by thorns, or tangled in poison ivy. I practically dove into the jungle and clawed my way to the other side, where I almost stumbled into a mud-filled gully. Up the hill on the other side, there was a shiny gray sports car stuck in the mud. 

Dad’s car. With Dad inside – looking utterly shocked.

I scrambled over the gully and up the other side, my face exploding in tears. 

It’s you!

It was the happiest moment of my life. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Thank you for beeping that horn!

Due to his physical decline after a stroke he had many years ago, he’d been too shaky to walk all the way back to the main road. He’d hoped that the owners of a nearby cabin would show up for the holiday, but nobody came. When things started to get more desperate, he decided to start honking the horn, revving the engine, and blasting the radio. 

“I was trying to be a nuisance,” he told me.

Multiple people had already searched that area, even going as far as that cabin. His car was stuck just around the corner from it, barely out of sight. Surely nobody imagined that he would have driven further into the woods if he wanted to turn around. It was insane to see how far he’d gotten, and yet how close he was to his original destination.

When I asked him what happened, he could only shake his head and chalk it up to a bad decision.

So, how did he survive?

Shaking with joy, moments after finding Dad in the forest.

Dad had been nursing a half-empty Gatorade that his grandkids had left in the car from the 4th of July, and there were some mints in the glovebox. He even had some diabetes pills in his pocket to tide him over. At a nearby cabin, people had left some bottles of soda on the porch. He steadily sipped them over the days to stay hydrated.

“So, did you steal the soda?” my aunt later asked.

“No, I left some money for them,” he replied. “And I was very generous.” Ha!

Things settled down after the initial race to get help. We brought Dad back to the cabin and Aunt Lynda fixed him a sandwich and a big glass of chocolate milk. A neighbor helped Uncle Marc pull Dad’s car out of the mud. John and his friends came back to celebrate with lots of hugs and a hard-earned beer. We got the word out with the police and the community that all was well. 

Me, John, and Dad feeling joyful, post-rescue.

Later that night, at my mom’s house, I finally got my chance to cry it all out. Tears of happiness mingled with tears of distress as I considered how close we’d come to missing him — or even losing him. 

I still can’t quite describe that feeling, but now I know what it’s like to live through a miracle. 

After nearly three days, we found him!