I stood on the deck of a houseboat moored near Long Beach, California speaking with a very ordinary family, sanding, painting and refurbishing their sea-going home.
“Tell this guy your story”, my friend Steven urged the couple on the boat … perhaps sensing that I really love a great yarn.
What followed persuaded me that the most ordinary-looking people are capable of the most amazing courage and imagination.
The wife’s dad had gone missing while driving on a remote mountain road in the California wilderness.
The police said, we can’t do much, lets see if he turns up. The family went into high gear.
They tracked down the Dad’s credit card transactions, got his cellphone records, figured out where’d he’d last purchased petrol … they pored over maps, they begged favours from local helicopter pilots for time in the air.
Family members drove the remote road a dozen times checking every twist and turn.
After two weeks … a breakthrough … a broken branch by the roadside let them to take a closer look …
There … below at the base of a 150 metre foot ravine and they found Dad … injured, close to death and eating crushed spiders
He’d scratched his last will and testament on the car boot.
Not everyone who fell into that treacherous ravine had been so lucky. In another wrecked car a few metres away … a dead guy … he’d been there about a year.
I’d love to have those guys who would not give up looking, in my corner if I ever went missing.