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CRYSTAL LAKE, Summit County — Most of the time, medical helicopters take people away. But one flying around the High Unitas Tuesday afternoon was doing the opposite: it was bringing a lost boy to his family.
"Agh! She's trying to kill me!" laughed 17-year-old Joseph Schellenberg, as his aunt hugged him as soon as he walked out of the helicopter.
"Are you OK?" his aunt, Kristy Gay, asked.
Yeah, it was all smiles during this reunion, which is a complete opposite emotion from what everyone was feeling the entire day.
Joseph and his family, from Rexburg, Idaho, were camping near Crystal Lake, off the popular Mirror Lake Highway. Sometime Monday night or early Tuesday morning, Joseph got out of his tent.
He walked away from the campsite and got lost.
"I zipped his tent closed, and when we woke up this morning he was gone," said Aaron Schellenberg, Joseph's father.
Most of the family started looking for him while one family member drove a half an hour to get cellphone service and call 911.
Right away, search and rescue crews from Summit and Wasatch counties went into the wilderness to look for Joseph. Their biggest concern was that the teen suffers from a mental disability that causes him to think like a 7-year-old.
"This new medication we're trying is giving him a little more confidence, which is good," said Joseph's father, "that's what we want, but it has given him a little extra confidence to go a little farther."
Just before 5 p.m. Tuesday, a rescuer found Joseph nearly 5 miles from the campsite.
"There was lots of cheers and definite relief," Gay said. "We said a prayer of thanks. We've definitely seen a miracle here with this boy."
Joseph was hungry and tired, but alive and well.
"I'm really glad he was found because we were really worried," said Joseph's younger brother Adam.
Joseph's father couldn't stop praising the search and rescue teams.
"They are all volunteers doing this on their own time," Aaron Schellenberg said. "As soon as I get back to Idaho, I'm going to go into my local sheriff's office and ask them to train me to be on their search and rescue team. I just get goose bumps thinking about it."
Email: acabrero@ksl.com
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