VULTURES SAVE DOWNED PILOT

It was one of those weekend news days that you dread as a TV reporter. There is nothing going on that would make a good or lead TV news story for the evening news.

You hope that something important that has good picture possibilities will happen early in the day so you can get it edited and wrapped for the Six O'clock news.

The Sunday News Producer at KHOU TV in Houston, Texas tells me that the only thing in the future's book for this Sunday was a garden show about 3 pm, but he planned to send the weatherman out there for a live weather shot. I was happy about this because I did not want to report on a garden show. The producer said that on Friday evening a single engine plane flying from Dallas to Pasadena had disappeared. He said they were still looking for it this Sunday north of Conroe, Texas, which is about 50 miles north of Houston. I said let me do a story about the search by the Civil Air Patrol, he agreed.

My photographer and I headed north on I-45 to the small Conroe Airport. It was already hot and it was only 10 am. We had just changed over from film to videotape, and my photographer reminded me about four times that we now had to carry a lot of gear that was mounted on a small cart. It was the first days of the new video systems for news. KHOU was one of the first stations to use the new and heavy video system for news.

It took about an hour to get to the Conroe Airport. The Civil Air Patrol is a voluntary organization that looks for missing planes. They use private planes to do grid searches of the route that the missing plane was flying. We took video of one search plane taking off and the volunteers talking to the planes and going over maps. Then we did an interview with the Major who was in charge of the search. So far we had a bunch of boring video that showed almost nothing and we had no new information. The information I had was on the news the past Friday night. I said to my photographer let's go search for the plane. He said, "Oh yeah, we are going to find the plane!" If the pilot were alive when he crashed, he would be dead by now. I checked the map for the missing plane's route and the area they thought he had crashed and we were off. The land was covered with tall pine trees. So if the plane hit the top of the trees going 70 to 100 miles per hour then it would be torn apart. It is almost impossible to crash land on top of trees and live. (I am a licensed private pilot, and I have crashed before.) We drove the back roads of the thick woods of East Texas. We were having no luck at all and then we ran into a Sheriff's Deputy driving an old red pickup truck. He asked what a news van was doing in the back woods? I explained about the missing plane and that we were looking for it. Then the deputy said something that I had never head before, "if you are looking for a dying or dead pilot, then look for the circling vultures."

So we followed the deputy in his old red truck on the old logging roads through the forest. At one point we stopped because the news van could not make it through the ruts of the road. We rode with the deputy with our heavy equipment in the back of the pickup. It was like riding over a washing board. We had to cross a small creek with some water. The road narrowed and the pine trees were at least 10 to 12 feet tall. My photographer says there is no way he crashed out here and lived. We had been driving, or should I say bouncing in that red pickup for about 30-minutes when we stopped for a moment. I was in the middle between the deputy and my photographer and I could not believe what I saw through the dirty windshield. About 100-feet ahead of us on the right side of this rut-filled road was a man sitting up against a pine tree. I yelled, "There he is, up there on the side of the road." We piled out of the truck, and I yelled at the deputy to wait a minute until we could get the gear out of the truck. My photographer snapped on the video camera that took about 30 seconds to fire up and I lifted the gear on the cart out of the truck. When my photographer said, "I'm hot", I dashed toward the man who was looking at us with a quizzical look. As I approached him I said, "Are you the downed pilot." He did not answer that question. The first thing he said to me was, "Man do you have some water?" Of course I didn't have any water on me, so I yelled to the deputy, "You got some water?" He got a plastic container of water out of the truck and we gave the downed pilot the first drink he had had since Friday.

As I looked at the pilot I was shocked. He had several large holes in his head. In his through there was a hole the size of a coffee cup, and another hole in he temple the size of a half dollar. There were some other major cuts. He told me he hit the dashboard of the plane when it crashed into a tree. He said after the crash he was bleeding badly so he stuffed pine needles, leaves, and dirt into the wounds. This stopped the bleeding.

He had the look of a "stuffed scare crow" because there were pine needles and leaves sticking out of holes in his head and throat. We learned later that he also had two broken legs and a dislocated shoulder. He was very lucky to be alive. If it had not been for those vultures we would not have found him.

The pilot from Pasadena said, "Did you find my map?" I said no. He said "I drew a map in the dirt before I crawled away from the crash site, so you would know which way I went." I interviewed the pilot about the crash and what he had been doing since Friday night. I had one of those big mike sigs that said "NewsCenter 11" on the mike. Because I believed I was interviewing a man who was dying in front of me, I was embarrassed to have the sig on the mike showing in the picture, so I lowered it down the cable. The deputy radioed for an ambulance and rescue workers. They could not get the ambulance past the creek on the logging road, so they walked in with a backboard and emergency equipment.

After the rescue workers took the pilot to the ambulance we retraced his path back to the crash site. Just like he had said he had drawn a map in the dirt. It showed North and there was an arrow pointing to the direction he crawled away from the plane. The pine trees were about 20-feet tall. He said his plane lost power and he tried to make a crash landing on the tops of the tall pines. But at the speed he was flying or not flying it was not possible. He said the plane skidded on top of the trees for a short distance and then dived forward into the trees and hit a large pine tree. He said he was thrown into the dash and that is where he got the holes in his head and neck. The plane was a crumpled pile of aluminum. The tail was part way up a tree. He said he stayed at the crash sit all Friday night but then decided to crawl toward an open area so searchers could see him; that's when he found the logging road. My photographer shot lots of video of the crash site and the map he had drawn in the dirt.

The deputy gave us a ride back to our van and we headed back to Houston with the lead story. Not only was it the lead story in Houston but also it was a lead story on the CBS Evening News. The pilot survived and the emergency room doctor said his quick thinking to stop the bleeding by stuffing the wounds with pine needles, leaves and dirt saved his life. The grateful family wanted to thank the deputy who had told us about the vultures and help us find their father. I called the sheriff's office to get his name. I told them about the elderly man in the deputy's uniform, the old red truck and how he had helped us follow the vultures and find the downed pilot. They said we don't have a deputy like that. Our deputies arrived with the ambulance. I said, "But he radioed in from his truck to get the ambulance." They said our records show that it was a news crew who called in and said they had found the missing pilot. I said, "Then who was the old deputy?" The officer said, "Well he wasn't one of ours." Now I know that old man existed because I sat beside him in that old red pickup. Some say he was the pilot's "Guardian Angel." I am not sure who he was, but I know one thing, if he had not come along that pilot would never have been found alive.

If I ever get to Heaven that's one of my first questions, "Who was that old deputy?"