It is always frightening to
have a loved one missing in the wilderness, especially when days
go by and hundreds of searchers find nothing. What if the lost one
doesn’t have the cognitive
ability to find his way home, can not respond to his name, can not
call out for help, and is without their life-saving medicine?
Such was the case at
Trade Lake Camp, a camp for autistic adults near Grantsburg, Wis.,
from June 15 to June 22. Keith Kennedy, a 25-year-old camper from
Shoreview, wandered off of the campgrounds. Kennedy’s
autism limits his vocabulary to four words, and he must take anti-rejection
medication due to a kidney transplant. Bruce Kennedy, his father,
donated a kidney to his son in 1995.
For a week, hundreds of volunteers as well as firefighters from St.
Paul and Maple Grove searched an estimated 40 square miles around Trade
Lake Camp for Kennedy, with no success. One complication in the search
was that he could be frightened by loud noises and run away from the
searchers.
On the evening of the
seventh day of the search, his mother Linda was beginning to feel “the reality” that
her son may have died. The search was close to being called off.
Kennedy was found alive
at about 7 p.m. on June 22 by two St. Paul firefighters. He was
lying near a stream in an area that had been searched three times
before. He was covered in dirt, bug bites and ticks, dehydrated
and hypothermic, with a body temperature below 90 degrees. He could
not stand or speak, but he was conscious and responsive. According
to St. Paul firefighter Gary Ruiz, who first spotted him, at that
time he could only respond to his name with a moan. But “to have him
make that noise was one of the happiest days of my life,” Ruiz
said.
Kennedy was transported via helicopter to the University of Minnesota
Medical Center-Fairview. His parents only saw him briefly before he
was airlifted away. He was initially reported to be in intensive care
but was stable and doing amazingly well for having been lost in the
wilderness for a week without his medication. His condition has continued
to improve.
Why Kennedy wandered
away from the camp, where he went, and how he survived will probably
not be known due to his limited vocabulary. Linda Kennedy has said
in media interviews, “From about age three
he’s been a runner, and our house, really, truly, was like Fort
Knox. We had so many systems set up to make sure that he was safe and
not going to escape.” It is theorized that Kennedy sneaked
into the cafeteria to eat some popcorn in the evening he disappeared,
and then went into the woods out of fear of being caught. He was
reported missing at about 8 p.m., and the search began.
His mother has resolved
to help out the next time she hears of a missing person. She has
also stated that she hopes the incident doesn’t
turn people off to these kinds of camps that she says truly do help
people with disabilities.
Bruce Kennedy is reportedly
researching the idea of GPS chips that can be implanted under the
skin to track a person that’s wandered
away. However, that kind of use of a tracking device has long prompted
debate in the disability community. ![end of story]()
