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MAPLETON — A father and son from Mapleton are back in the United States, safely, after a run-in with Mexican border guards. They were driving into Mexico as part of a humanitarian project, bringing clothes and goods to villagers who need them.
At the family's home in Mapleton Tuesday, Leslie Loveless laughed as she read the text messages her husband sent Saturday. But at the time she received them, she was worried.
"I didn't realize how much I love my husband," she said.
Her husband, James Loveless, and her son Alex Loveless were at the U.S.-Mexico border crossing, near Calexico, Calif., when they were stopped. The two were part of a humanitarian service project, and everything they had in the truck was confiscated by Mexican border guards.
"You just take it for granted that everything is going to be OK," Leslie Loveless said.
She said the guards told her husband to pay $1,500 in pesos to get their truck and items back.
At one point, when he was getting the money, Leslie Loveless said her husband was mugged by two men. But he fought off his attackers and was saved by a cab driver.
For Alex Loveless, this trip is something he's wanted to do for years. But he got sick three years ago and couldn't go.
"Unfortunately, the week before he came home from his (LDS) mission, he had to go in for an emergency appendectomy," Leslie Loveless said, "and they found out it wasn't his appendix. It was cancer."
A few months ago, doctors told Alex Loveless he didn't have much longer to live, so he decided this was the year for the trip. Then came the border guard incident — something that has never happened before in the project's 25 year history.
"They got in line, and they said, ‘Just got a bad dude, just a bad egg,' and he didn't give them any space," said Lis Edmonds, the wife of the project's leader.
The humanitarians paid the money and got the truck back, but all the donated items were gone.
For Leslie Loveless, it just doesn't make sense. "All because of a good deed for charity," she said.
