EMERY COUNTY, Utah (KTVX) – A dog is being credited with saving its owner, an elderly woman with dementia, after she wandered from a cabin in Utah’s central mountains and became lost for nearly three days amid scorching summer heat.
“She’s really lucky that she had her dog with her,” said James Thomas, the conservation officer who found the woman.
The incident happened last month near Joe’s Valley in western Emery County. On June 24, the woman went out for an evening walk with her dog near her family’s cabin and didn’t return. Her relatives spent the night searching for her, but when they couldn’t find her, they sought help in the morning. The woman was last seen wearing a T-shirt and slippers.
Search and rescue crews looked for the woman amid triple-digital daytime heat, but didn’t find her. That’s when Thomas and his K-9, Kip, were tapped to help. They searched in the evening and nighttime when mountain temperatures plunged into the 50s. The cool weather allowed Kip to work longer.
“If we’re running in 100-degree weather, he’s only going to work for about 15 minutes and then he’s going to need to take a break,” Thomas said. “At night, he can run for up to an hour.”
Around 3:30 a.m., Thomas and Kip heard barking. They moved toward the area, thinking it might have been the missing woman’s dog, but they didn’t find her. Kip kept running up toward the mountainside, but Thomas didn’t think the missing woman would be in such high terrain, he said.
The next day, a neighbor told Thomas that he also heard barking in the early morning hours. A review of nearby security footage showed the woman and the dog walking west, up toward the mountainside, the Utah Divison of Wildlife Resources said. Thomas and the concerned neighbor started to look for the woman again, this time moving up the higher terrain.
Again, in the evening, they heard barking. As Thomas and the neighbor moved closer, the barking continued. Eventually, Kip reached the woman and her chocolate Labrador, who never left its owner’s side despite not being on a leash.
The woman had scratches and bruises up and down her arms, she was barefoot and severely dehydrated. Still, Thomas said she was happy to see him and Kip.
“She thought she’d only been gone about 10 minutes,” he said. “To see her still alive, it was a good feeling. It was pretty remarkable what she went through.”
Thomas stayed with the woman until help arrived. A helicopter brought the woman off the mountainside, and medical crews treated her at the scene.
The rescue is one of several in recent weeks that involved people getting lost in Utah’s wild areas during periods of extreme summer heat. In a handful of cases, the hikers have died or were hospitalized after running out of water.