Henry Morello prayed to Saint Anthony,
the patron saint of lost things. But as the 84-year-old spent a fifth
night stuck in a ditch in the Arizona desert, he started to lose hope.
“My phone went dead, my battery went dead, and I went dead,” Morello
said.
But Morello lived to tell his tale
Tuesday at a Phoenix hospital, where the diabetic man was admitted in
good condition despite drinking windshield wiper fluid to stay hydrated.
He didn’t have water, Morello said, so
he broke open the wiper fluid container with a rock and filtered it with
napkin to try to make it safe.
Morello said he made a wrong turn while
driving home February 7, 2011, from the Phoenix suburb of Cave Creek and
ended up stuck in the desert north of the city, near the state’s major
north-south road for Grand Canyon-bound travellers.
Morello said he became stranded when –
realizing he took a wrong turn – he made a U-turn and wound up in a
ditch. He tried to crawl out of the car, but did not get far and
returned.
He ripped a chrome piece from his car and put it on the roof, hoping someone would see the reflection.
A pack of hikers found him Saturday
morning. He heard a knock on a window from a hiker, and suddenly his
long, painful ordeal was over.
“I just kissed him,” Morello said of the hiker. “He looked like an angel to me.”
The unidentified hikers were not part of
the 100 volunteers who passed out fliers and searched for Morello since
Wednesday, but they knew he was missing, said Jim Sheehan, a friend who
helped organize a search team.
“Nobody ever gave up,” said Sheehan, who was on a search plane when he got a call saying Morello had been found.
Morello said he used car mats to stay
warm and even read a car manual from cover to cover to pass time. Nights
were hardest because he would get scared, he said.
Overnight temperatures the week he was
missing were in the upper 30s to the mid-40s, the National Weather
Service said. His car and cell phone battery went dead early in the
ordeal.
Doctors at John C. Lincoln Hospital said
he arrived in good condition considering what he had been through.
Morello will remain there for a few days while he is treated for kidney
damage.
Dr. Kevin Veale said initial reports
were that Morello had consumed some antifreeze, which would have been
much worse than wiper fluid.
Morello’s nephew, Carl Morello, said his
family in Chicago was overjoyed to hear that his uncle was found alive.
“Miracles still do happen,” Carl said.
Morello lives on his own but a caregiver visits daily. He won’t be driving by himself for a long time, said Sheehan.
Morello said he learned another lesson from his adventure: “I’ll never drive without water.”
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