An Oregon trucker, Jacob Cartwright, was found safe Saturday after he was missing in a remote part of eastern Oregon for four days. Cartwright had been hauling a truckload of potato chips, but did not take any with him before walking 36 miles to La Grande.
A trucker lost in snowy Oregon survived four days in the middle of nowhere, with a dead phone, no water and no food, before emerging safely on Saturday.
Well, he did have food — a truckload of it — but his integrity kept him from taking it.
Jacob Cartwright appears to be mostly uninjured after walking 36 miles in eastern Oregon, arriving back in his hometown of La Grande.
Cartwright went missing late Tuesday when he took a wrong turn. The trucker was hauling a full load of potato chips when he his trailer got stuck. Even lost and alone with no food of his own, Cartwright told his boss he couldn’t take from the cargo. « That’s worth money, » he said.
In the midst of a 400-hour trip at the time, the 22-year-old Cartwright endured temperatures that dipped into the 40s at night.
Cartwright has a wife and two kids, ages 2 and 4. According to earlier reports, he is 6-foot-6 and about 275 pounds.
He was taken to a hospital for evaluation.
« He was disoriented and confused (Saturday) morning, » public information officer Sgt. Kaipo Raiser of the Oregon State Police told KTVZ.
Authorities began a search as soon as Cartwright was reported missing around midnight Wednesday. The area in which he got lost had limited cell coverage, and his battery died before he could get a signal.
La Grande is a city of about 15,000 in population, roughly 50 miles from the Idaho border.
Cartwright’s boss, Roy Henry, said the wrong turn was a result of Cartwright entering the wrong address into his GPS initially, and that the incident was « a simple matter of human error, » but said the employee of Little Trees Transportation would keep his job.
State police found Cartwright’s truck with its wheels perched precariously on a steep embankment, public information officer Sgt. Kaipo Raiser said.
The status of the potato chips is unknown.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
