84-year-old survives five days in desert

Henry Morello prayed to Saint Anthony,
the patron saint of lost things. But as the
84-year-old spent a fifth night stuck in a
ditch in the Arizona desert, he started to
lose hope. “My phone went dead, my
battery went dead, and I went dead,”
Morello said.
But Morello lived to tell his tale Tuesday
at a Phoenix hospital, where the diabetic
man was admitted in good condition
despite drinking windshield wiper fluid to
stay hydrated.
He didn’t have water, Morello said, so he
broke open the wiper fluid container with
a rock and filtered it with napkin to try to
make it safe.
Morello said he made a wrong turn while
driving home February 7, 2011, from the
Phoenix suburb of Cave Creek and ended
up stuck in the desert north of the city,
near the state’s major north-south road
for Grand Canyon-bound travellers.
Morello said he became stranded when –
realizing he took a wrong turn – he made
a U-turn and wound up in a ditch. He
tried to crawl out of the car, but did not
get far and returned.
He ripped a chrome piece from his car
and put it on the roof, hoping someone
would see the reflection.
A pack of hikers found him Saturday
morning. He heard a knock on a window
from a hiker, and suddenly his long,
painful ordeal was over.
“I just kissed him,” Morello said of the
hiker. “He looked like an angel to me.”
The unidentified hikers were not part of
the 100 volunteers who passed out fliers
and searched for Morello since
Wednesday, but they knew he was
missing, said Jim Sheehan, a friend who
helped organize a search team.
“Nobody ever gave up,” said Sheehan,
who was on a search plane when he got a
call saying Morello had been found.
Morello said he used car mats to stay
warm and even read a car manual from
cover to cover to pass time. Nights were
hardest because he would get scared, he
said.
Overnight temperatures the week he was
missing were in the upper 30s to the
mid-40s, the National Weather Service
said. His car and cell phone battery went
dead early in the ordeal.
Doctors at John C. Lincoln Hospital said
he arrived in good condition considering
what he had been through. Morello will
remain there for a few days while he is
treated for kidney damage.
Dr. Kevin Veale said initial reports were
that Morello had consumed some
antifreeze, which would have been much
worse than wiper fluid.
Morello’s nephew, Carl Morello, said his
family in Chicago was overjoyed to hear
that his uncle was found alive. “Miracles
still do happen,” Carl said.
Morello lives on his own but a caregiver
visits daily. He won’t be driving by himself
for a long time, said Sheehan.
Morello said he learned another lesson
from his adventure: “I’ll never drive
without water.”