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Morning News

Survivors' Story: Eve Feight Discusses Week Stranded in Gila National Forest

Aired February 16, 2001 - 10:53 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We have got a heck of a survival story for this morning. It's a New Mexico couple who said that they were stranded in Gila National Forest for a week after taking a wrong turn.

Eve Feight joins us now to talk about how she and her husband Baer (ph) survived and how they were rescued.

Eve, first of all, great name for this story, Feight, because this is -- fate played quite a role in this story. As I understand it, you guys were going to go visit your daughter and you took a wrong turn. Is that what happened?

EVE FEIGHT, RESCUED FROM GILA NATL. FOREST: Well, it was a friend, but we call her a daughter by mutual agreement. Yes, that's what happened.

HARRIS: So what happened? How did you guys get stuck in the snow?

FEIGHT: Well, we had gone in to -- we had a map, of course, and my husband had been there about 40 years ago, and I had too. So we really didn't know that particular area. But we were going to -- we had changed our plans. We were going down to the Anthony, Texas area on I-25 and then cut across on I-10.

But as a last-minute some circumstances changed and we changed our plans and I was going to call on the cell phone to tell her that we had changed our plans. However, we couldn't get -- the circuits were busy and then we didn't get any service on it. So we were going to stop in the small town of Reserve and get gas and have lunch and call her. Well, it turned out that the part of town -- we kept thinking we were going to find more town. We didn't. We'd gotten through and there was our road, so the next town would be Glenwood, New Mexico, which was 33 miles.

HARRIS: So you end up in the wilderness then.

FEIGHT: Yes, we ended...

HARRIS: And how deep was the snow out there?

FEIGHT: We made this wrong turn. And the day we got in, we high-centered on ice that our car had created due to the spinning of the wheel, and we would get stuck and try to get out. And it was 22 inches that day. The next day at 2:30 it started snowing. And by 7:00 the next morning, there was 36 inches, because my husband measured it.

HARRIS: And you guys were stuck in the car for how many days?

FEIGHT: We went in Tuesday the 6th at around 2:30 and we started out the 13th around 9:30.

HARRIS: Oh my goodness.

FEIGHT: And there was a cloud coming in, and -- but we have this little Bichon dog that just decide, I am not staying here anymore. And he ran away from us and we had to go -- my husband had to go get him. And then we had kind of talked about the story of we would walk -- try to walk back to where we had left the state Highway 180, and we were on 159 Forest Service road, see?

HARRIS: Now, that's...

FEIGHT: And so we had no idea how far back it was. So we made a plan that we would walk. We'd give ourselves four hours. And if after two hours we weren't at our destination, we'd give up the plan because we had to get back to the vehicle before it got cold again. So...

HARRIS: Yes, how...

FEIGHT: I'm sorry?

HARRIS: I'm sorry, but how did you live? How did you exist out there? What did you eat? What did you drink? What did you talk about?

FEIGHT: Oh, we had maybe five chocolate-laced macaroons. And for the first three days, I ate a little each day. We chewed 21 times. And my husband would eat a whole one because he's much larger. And we had a gallon and a half of our own water, but that went fast because we were not hungry, amazingly, but we were so thirsty. So then when the new snow came, he started scooping it up with a dust pan we happened to have and melting it in the sun when the sun would shine, and that was the water we lived on.

HARRIS: Well, I sure am glad you were able to get out of that mix -- that mess you were in. As I understand it, your dog was actually the one that discovered...

FEIGHT: It did.

HARRIS: .. the truck that had the rescuers in it. Well, make sure you give that dog a special treat.

FEIGHT: And the other thing you asked me what we ate on: We went in with three Reese's Nutrageous bars. And we came back home with one and three-quarters. HARRIS: For that, you deserve some sort of an endorsement deal for the Nutrageous bars. Listen, Eve Feight, good luck to you and Baer in your travels from here on out.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: I was going to say that sounds like a commercial in the making. But the fact that they didn't eat all of them and that's all they had to eat, that's not such a good endorsement for the candy bar.

(LAUGHTER)

And there was some left!

HARRIS: You were a captive audience, huh?

KAGAN: Absolutely.

HARRIS: All right.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

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