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Team coverage A Kearns couple stranded for 12 days on the Utah-Nevada border is found alive. Tamitha and Tom Garner are at Valley View Medical Center in Cedar City.
Tom Garner's father, Gerald Garner, called KSL to tell us that the couple had been found just before 4 p.m. Wednesday. Gerald says he got a call from Iron County Sheriff Mark Gower telling him they were OK.
Wednesday night the couple spoke to us from the Valley View Medical Center in Cedar City. Wearing blankets and hospital gowns, Tom and Tamitha were wheeled to a press conference. Just hours before, authorities had feared they were dead.
"I would say this has definitely made me a believer in prayer," Tom said.
Tamitha said, "I just want to thank each and every search and rescue and anybody who has put their time and energy into trying to find me and my husband and get us out alive. I wish my condolences to the widow of the rescuer that passed away. Just thank you, thank you."
"My family is what kept me going," Tamitha said. "Every thought was with my family. 'Hold on one more day. ... One more day and I'll be home." The couple says they did hear search planes overhead.
We've learned that before going to the gas station where surveillance video showed them filling up, they stopped at a grocery store and bought two boxes of granola bars. They lived off those and then dog food while they were lost.
"Food was low. Water was just about gone," Tamitha said. "We had two frozen bottles of water left. By that time we had actually started eating dog food."
Thomas said he got the idea to use cushions from the truck as snow shoes from watching a TV show. "I took the seat backs and laid them on the floor and folded them up and used bungy cords to secure them," he explained.
They told reporters they used deodorant to start fires at night to stay warm and dry out.
The couple got stuck on a road that was impassable, with 5-6 foot snow drifts. There were even warning signs telling drivers not to continue down the road.
Thomas said, "The snow had gotten too deep. I just couldn't get the truck turned around."
Iron County road worker Charles Hulet is the man who found the Garners. "They just grabbed and hugged me when I got out of my grader, and they were happy somebody had found them," he said.
"It was absolutely wonderful to see that big yellow monster coming down the road," Tamitha said of the snowplow Hulet was driving.
Hulet says he and his crew saw them standing alongside the road and knew immediately who they were. It's not far from where authorities and family members searched.
"We just put them in another vehicle and sent them down the road to get them to help," he said.
Iron County road worker Jordan Smith was the man who drove them out of the canyon. "They said that they'd stayed with their car for the first eight days and then started to walk out. They'd run out of food and had actually been eating dog food and melting snow," Smith said.
Smith said they told him they went down a road they shouldn't have gone down and got stuck there when a storm came in.
The Garner family called the rescue a miracle. Gerald said when he heard the news, he broke down and cried and gave a prayer of thanks.
"Until you've lost one of your family members and been reunited, there's absolutely no words to describe the feeling that I have inside," Gerald said.
The Garners anxiously left their Taylorsville home on their way to a long-awaited reunion. "I'm going to kiss them and hug them and give them a piece of my mind," Gerald said.
A short phone call from the Iron County Sheriff's Office Wednesday afternoon brought welcome news, leaving the family crying tears of joy.
Marcus Garner spent three days looking in that area for his brother and sister-in-law. He said, "It was cold, and I can't imagine what they've gone through. I'm just thankful for them to be found alive."
He says his brother is resourceful and smart. That was obvious, he says, when they went camping together. "He's always taken care of everything. You can count on Tom."
That's why relatives didn't allow themselves to think the worst, even at times when it seemed like Thomas and Tamitha Garner would never be found.
"I just never gave up hope. You can't. You can't," Gerald said.
Gerald said, "We're just ecstatic. We are just calling everybody, you know. And that's why I called you people because I could put the word out to so many people that have been, you know, in our prayers and have helped us physically and the resources, and everybody needs to know that, you know, the miracle has happened."
It was an incredible turn of events considering search crews were scaled back. He said, "You can't describe it. I mean the most precious thing in your life has been brought back to you, and you just can't describe it. It's just, it's amazing."
Gerald said that his son is resourceful. He said, "He's very intelligent, and he wasn't going to make any decisions that I could think of that was going to jeopardize their safety. And obviously, you know, it's true. I mean this is, this is just incredible."
Gower said, "One of the Iron County road workers come on to them today. They were up in an area up, from what I understand, very near the Iron-Beaver line, Iron County-Beaver County line, and they were trying to open up a road and they come on to them."
Initial reports are that the couple suffered a little frostbite and some dehydration, but they were alert and walking around. They were able to get into a pickup and drive down into a little town called Modena; that's where they met the ambulance.
The couple was taken to Valley View Medical Center in Cedar City. "They're obviously going to the hospital for observation, and we're just, you know, waiting to get our arms around them and kiss them and hug them and welcome them back and maybe give them a piece of my mind," Gerald said.
The couple's dog also was found.
The Garners left the Salt Lake Valley back on Jan. 24. They were hoping to photograph wild horses, so they took the long way around to St. George through western Utah and eastern Nevada.
The last confirmed sighting was surveillance video taken when they fueled up at a gas station in Panaca, Nev., on Jan. 26.
Searchers on the ground and in the air looked for them several times since, with a massive search this past weekend. The Garner family particularly thanked one volunteer searcher who died after looking for the missing couple.
Sheriffs in the area began switching to the theory the couple had met foul play. And then, just before 4 p.m., a road crew found them in an area roughly 60 miles west of Cedar City.
The area is pretty much a desert wilderness, although it's not completely uninhabited. There are some homes, but they are few and very far between. Some dirt roads get a bit of ranching traffic. But on some of those roads, especially in the winter, you can sit on a road a long time without ever seeing another car.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report. Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
