Don't know if this was posted or not but after reading this story the moral is that we should always have a chaperone with us wherever we go!
http://www.trib.com/AP/wire_detail.php?wire_num=176272 and
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_2226589,00.html
Lost pair's story raises doubts
Sheriff questions accounts; friends slam search efforts
By Joe Garner, Rocky Mountain News
September 2, 2003
The Garfield County sheriff says he finds inconsistencies in the saga of a man and woman whose family and friends have ridiculed law enforcement authorities over a search that eventually located the pair in a cave near Glenwood Springs.
The inconsistencies include the physical condition of the couple, John Hadar and Sherry DeCrow, who claim they survived almost five days in the cave without food and water, Sheriff Lou Vallario said Monday. He also cited the speed with which the pair were found once their family and friends joined the search.
On Monday, DeCrow blamed the sheriff's office for delays in the rescue. Hadar could not be reached for comment.
Byron Brown, who knows DeCrow and Hadar from church, agreed with DeGrow.
The sheriff and his deputies "are morons. They are all retarded," Brown said Monday.
"The sheriff's department, from the beginning, did nothing to find them," said Brown, 26, of Glenwood Springs. "They were looking for clues for people who might have killed them. They never looked for them to make it possible for them to survive."
Vallario said his department was notified late on Aug. 26 that Hadar and DeCrow - who are divorced, about 50, and friends through the Jehovah's Witnesses church in Carbondale - were missing. Early the next day, a Wednesday, Vallario assembled a missing-persons team that began routine checks on such things as credit-card use, telephone records and airport departures.
Some family members told investigators the pair might have eloped, Vallario said, although family and friends grew increasingly distraught as days passed with no word from either of them. No one suggested early on that the pair might have gone caving.
But when the pair was located Friday morning, it set off a firestorm of criticism over the way the first-term sheriff organized the search.
"I would do the same things the same way the next time," Vallario said. "It was a successful rescue. I still don't understand what their motivation is for going after me."
DeCrow said Monday that she and Hadar are simply friends. She said they went to explore Hubbard's Cave, a popular destination for cavers in the White River National Forest about 20 miles southeast of Glenwood Springs, late on the afternoon of Aug. 24, a Sunday. Hadar wanted her to show him the entrance to the cave, she said.
The sheriff said, however, that the cave is a popular recreation spot along a four-wheel-drive road, well known to cavers. So, the sheriff said, Hadar shouldn't have needed help finding the entrance - another inconsistency.
Although they didn't have food or water for an extended hike into the cave, the magnificent rock formations enticed them deeper and deeper into the mountainside until both of their flashlights suddenly went out and they were unable to find their way back to the entrance, DeCrow said.
"It was a pretty creepy feeling," she said, "because we knew that no one knew where we were."
She said they planned to survive, but they also talked of death.
More than 48 hours after the pair entered the cave, late on Tuesday night, DeCrow's daughter, who had been out of town, reported her mother missing.
For the next two days, Vallario said, he organized a missing-persons investigation.
A pilot friend of the pair conducted an aerial search around Glenwood Springs Thursday and located a white Chevy Suburban near the cave entrance that turned out to be Hadar's.
The sheriff's department then blocked off the area as a possible crime scene, Vallario said. He did not want family and friends to happen upon the couple's bodies if they had been victims of foul play.
"We'd never considered they might be lost in the mountains because none of the family suggested they ever went into the mountains - just the opposite," the sheriff said.
When investigators searched the entrance to the cave Thursday, they did not find Hadar's keys and wallet on the trail, but family and friends quickly spotted them Friday, Vallario said.
The sheriff cited the recovery of the keys and wallet as another inconsistency in the case; Brown cited the discovery as another example of law-enforcement's incompetence.
Similarly, searchers who went into the cave Thursday calling out the couple's names got no response, but family and friends found them "within a few minutes" the next morning, the sheriff said.
"The biggest inconsistency, according to the EMTs and paramedics who checked them out, is that their appearance was inconsistent with being lost in the cave for five days," Vallario said.
"They've refused to talk to us, and they verbally abused us on the way down the trail," the sheriff said. "They broke the No. 1 rule: They didn't tell anyone where they were going, and then they blamed the sheriff's department for rescuing them."Brown agreed his friends should have left word they were going to explore the cave, but he also said authorities should have scoured the local roads for Hadar's vehicle.
Brown also accused law enforcement officers of "cursing at us and flipping us off," after deputies created a perimeter at the mouth of the cave.
"I was choked by one of the detectives when I was carrying John Hadar off the trail," Brown said.
The sheriff said he was not aware of Brown's claims.
DeCrow said Monday she has not decided whether to take legal action against the sheriff's department.
But DeCrow said she remains convinced that "we would have been out of the cave almost a day sooner if (law-enforcement authorities) had let (their friends) come in after us."