A Child Is Lost

WILDERNESS

A Child Is Lost-- and Found

There are few human dramas quite as compelling as the search for a lost child. When 9-year-old Kevin Dye wandered away from a picnic on rugged Casper Mountain in east central Wyoming, there was an extra edge of urgency and fear for his survival: Kevin is brain damaged and requires constant medication to prevent epileptic seizures. More than 3,000 volunteers searched for eleven days until he was found--dehydrated and 25 Ibs. lighter than when his ordeal began, but otherwise in excellent condition.

Kevin's vulnerability provoked special reactions to his plight. Volunteers from as far away as Philadelphia and East St. Louis came to help in the search; the National Guard was called in to trek through the dense forest at night with infrared spotting devices. The owners of a restaurant on Casper Mountain turned their establishment over to the searchers for use as a headquarters. Residents of the area brought food and coffee to the volunteers, who spent wearying hours in the mountain wilderness.

But the search also produced reactions that Sheriff William Estes, who was in charge of the search, characterized as "nutty": crank callers suggested dressing the search teams in Santa Claus costumes to lure Kevin from the woods, or broadcasting the jingling song of an ice cream truck. After several fruitless days, the desperate searchers tried one of the schemes: the forest echoed eerily with the strains of one of Kevin's favorite songs, I Love Trash from Sesame Street.

Sleeping Quietly. More disturbing to Estes and the boy's parents were rumors that Kevin's condition had become animallike. Kevin suffers from aphasia, a form of brain damage that makes speech difficult, and from hyperactivity. To calm his hyperactive condition, Kevin normally takes tranquilizers, as well as drugs for epilepsy. After a week, the searchers--who had spotted the boy four times, only to see him run away, once in fear of a clattering helicopter--began to speculate that his struggle with the wilderness had made him hostile and unable to speak to humans at all, even his would-be rescuers. One search official instructed rescue teams: "This boy has become an animal. He doesn't think like any of us. If you see him, grab hold of him. And it might take two or three, because he'll fight."

Kevin was finally found on a grassy knoll that had been thoroughly searched twice before. Michael Murphy, a member of the Rocky Mountain Rescue Group, based in Boulder, Colo., discovered him sleeping quietly in the morning sun the eleventh day he was missing. Murphy walked to the boy who had eluded so many for so long: "Hi, Kevin. Do you want to go home?" The soft reply: "Yes."

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