‘Miracle’ rescue spares man’s life
Published: November 24, 2006
A few weeks ago, Earl “Jim” McRoberts was in Falcon, Colo., visiting his daughter. One morning, he decided to drive to a store to buy a case of hot tamales — a trip that turned into an ordeal that almost cost the 71-year-old Deerfield Township resident his life. [The Falling Season: Inside the Life and Death Drama of Aspen's Mountain Rescue Team]
McRoberts put on his tennis shoes and forgot to bring his cell phone that morning, two decisions that proved costly as he encountered blizzard-like conditions and lost control of the Ford Five Hundred he was driving. He ended up in a ditch.
Nancy McRoberts, his wife of 49 years, fought back emotion as she remembered that day. The two met on a blind date, and now have four kids and 10 grandchildren.
“I would have protested him going,” she said, but she was upstairs in her daughter’s house.
“It’s kind of a family joke,” she added. “I buy him shoes and shoes and shoes, and all he wears is tennis shoes.”
Jim McRoberts said he loves spicy food, and wanted to get “a couple of cases” of the tamales that are available in Colorado for less money than in Michigan. But the quest would end up testing the physical stamina of the retired Ford worker, who needs insulin daily for diabetes and suffers from heart disease.
Falcon is east of Colorado Springs, and sits at an altitude of more than 6,800 feet. Jim McRoberts recalled that there weren’t many trees in the area, which could have protected him from the frigid winds he braved after his car ran into the ditch.
Meanwhile, his family had frantically started searching for him, enlisting local rescue teams. McRoberts and his wife have three daughters and one son, including Brenda Burt, 43, of Wixom. She and her husband, Kelly, immediately flew to Colorado, where rescue workers set up a control center in the home of her sister, Michelle Hall.
“It was a desperate search,” Burt recalled. “When I arrived at my sister’s, it was dark. All we could do was sit there are worry … It was really cold each night.”
“I was, like, numb,” said Nancy McRoberts. “All I could do is sit and pray and wait. I really didn’t think we were going to find him alive. It was terribly cold.”
The family searched by car and the effort included two airplanes that scoured the area.
The family doctor, David Mika of Brighton, told them their husband and father could only last two days at the most without insulin.
But Jim McRoberts himself said he wasn’t really worried for most of the time he was out in the cold.
That is, until Thursday morning, Oct. 19, two days after he started out for the tamales.
He was lying on the ground, yelling for help, and he could hear some people talking nearby — but they didn’t seem to see him. That’s when he considered the unthinkable: He might not make it.
“I never felt that until the last day,” he said. “Till I yelled and yelled and yelled and yelled. I could hear people talking, but I couldn’t tell where they were. Then I kind of gave up.”
A friend of his son-in-law drove up in a pickup truck and found McRoberts late that Thursday afternoon. McRoberts spent the next six days in the hospital with kidney problems and severe frostbite to his feet. He’ll probably have to have some toes amputated.
Only afterward did McRoberts realize how close to death he came.
“At the time, I didn’t think too much of it. Now I know that could have happened,” he said.
For his wife, the end of the ordeal was nothing less than divine intervention.
“It reaffirmed my belief in miracles and faith and trust in God,” Nancy McRoberts said. “Jesus saved him, that’s all. God wasn’t ready for him.”
“I’m just elated,” Burt said. “It’s just an amazing miracle that we found him alive. He was on the verge.”
McRoberts flew back to Michigan for treatment — family members made sure to thank United Airlines for helping with that — and his care is being done through the University of Michigan Trauma and Burn Center.
He still feels pain in his feet, and is on strong antibiotics to avoid infection. He gets around his home with the aid of a walker, and keeping track of his medications looks like a full-time job. And he can’t drive anymore.
Despite all that, and even though he never got his tamales, McRoberts is not complaining.
“I usually take things for granted,” he said. “After something like this happens, ain’t no such a thing.”
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