• April 02, 2007
• Vol. 67
• No. 13

Lost Boy Scout Found

By Alex Tresniowski

Michael Auberry, 12, Used His Boy Scout Training to Survive Three Days Lost in North Carolina Woods

It was the first sign of good news in three bad days—a dog named Gandalf barking. A trained jet-black Shiloh Shepherd sent into the woods of western North Carolina to find Boy Scout Michael Auberry, 12—whose March 17 disappearance triggered an intensive land-and-air search—Gandalf picked up his scent and led three searchers straight to the boy, who was found walking alongside a stream about a half-mile from his troop's camp. "He was tired and weak, a little dehydrated and disoriented," says assistant fire chief Joe Ware, who was part of the team that finally brought Auberry out of the woods. "He said he wanted peanut butter, so we gave him a couple of packages of peanut butter crackers and some water."

The March 20 rescue seemed a miracle—but how did Auberry get lost in the first place? A shy, imaginative child who loved the adventure book Hatchet, about a boy who survives a plane crash in the woods, Auberry skipped his troop's scheduled March 17 hike and stayed at camp with a troop leader. But he later grabbed a mess kit with some Pringles and set out on his own. "He was homesick," his father, Kent, 50, said after the rescue. "He started walking. He thought he'd walk to the road and hitchhike home."

Instead he got lost in North Carolina's 7,000-acre Doughton Park—without his medicine for Attention Deficit Disorder, which experts say could have hurt his ability to focus. Yet Auberry, who was lucky to be wearing a fleece jacket and windbreaker—and who benefited from temperatures that mostly stayed above freezing—made good decisions. He stayed "on the move" to keep warm, his father said, and he avoided potentially poisonous vegetation. He also drank plenty of water from streams. "He knew to stay hydrated," says Ware. "His scout training really helped him."

Now Auberry is safely back with his family: father Kent, mother Debbie and sister Laura, 6. "He is worried about the schoolwork he will have to make up," says his aunt Chandra Auberry. "And he wanted to know if anyone had gotten him on TiVo."

• Contributors:
• Reported by Michaele Ballard/North Carolina.