Missing hiker grateful after first responders track him down in Westchester nature preserve
BEDFORD, New York (WABC) -- First responders worked together to find a lost hiker on a trail in Westchester County early Thursday morning.
The 72-year-old hiker got lost in the Pound Ridge Reservation and had been keeping in touch with his wife until his phone died. Then he was off the grid for hours, leaving his wife in a panic.
Alan Shanker can smile about it now after an afternoon run on Wednesday turned into a nightmare rescue.
"The time went very slowly, and I was cold and because I was wet from the run," he said.
Shanker set off on a seven-mile trail run through the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation -- his first time in the massive 4,300-acre nature preserve.
He was using an app for navigation, but the problem was the sun was setting and his phone was dying. He called his wife when his battery hit 3%.
"I said I have about an hour to go, I think I can make it back to the parking lot, and if I don't in an hour, then call the police," Shanker said.
Dozens of first responders set up a command post and began searching.
Shanker's wife sent a screenshot of his last tracked location, but a police helicopter was hampered by the canopy of leaves, so crews on the ground scoured the trails in the dark.
"We went down a couple routes and we kept getting blocked by large tree that were down, we tried a different route and came across a pedestrian walkway, if you will, that we couldn't traverse in our UTVs so we had to go across on foot," said Bedford Police Dept. Det. Matt Whalen.
The search party would stop every few hundred yards to call out Shanker's name. Finally, just after midnight, there was a response.
"He was able to walk when he could see where our flashlights were, because walking around you're basically completely blind out there," Whalen said.
Shanker was cold, but otherwise OK. He is a 20-year veteran triathlete who just added to his medal collection last week.
Now he is grateful and humbled by the first response to his predicament.
"I was amazed that all these people came out and did this, this was the middle of the night for them," Shanker said.
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