HENRY Morello began to lose hope after being stranded in his car in the Arizona desert for five long days in which the 84-year-old drank windshield wiper fluid, used car mats to stay warm and read a car manual from cover to cover to pass the time.
Then, he heard a knock on a window from a hiker, and suddenly his long, painful ordeal was over.
‘I just kissed him,’ Mr Morello said of the hiker. ‘He looked like an angel to me.’ Mr Morello described his ordeal at a hospital news conference Tuesday as he recalled making a wrong turn while driving home Feb 7 from a restaurant and ending up stuck in the desert. His car and cell phone battery soon went dead as rescuers looked for him.
Mr Morello said he became stranded when – realising he made a wrong turn – made a U-turn and ended up in a ditch. He tried to crawl out of the car but did not get too far and returned. He ripped a chrome piece from his car and put it on the roof, hoping someone would see the reflection.
Overnight temperatures the week he was missing were between 4 to 7 deg C, the National Weather Service said. The hikers who found him on Saturday morning weren’t identified at the news conference, but Jim Sheehan, a search and rescue leader, said they knew of the missing man.
‘Nobody ever gave up’ in the search, said Mr Sheehan, who was on a search plane when he got a call saying Mr Morello had been found.