all right. paul vercammen, thank you very much. i really appreciate that. i want to get back now to that press conference, those horsemen that held a press conference a short time ago talking about their extraordinary ordeal, how they stumbled upon hannah and james dimaggio in the woods and what made them think something was odd about it and volunteering their time and their horses. let s take a listen to that. mark john. got a ranch up in sweet. former jim county sheriff. retired army officer army rangers. this is my wife christa. she s been with me for 52 years. actually, 53, 54. so we re hanging in there. so you guys can get started by asking questions. and as you come up you guys can talk about i d like to have mike and his wife mike and mary young. we re also from sweet, idaho. got a ranch there also.
so questions? which one of you guys made the first phone call? i made the first phone call. when we got up on the mountain that morning, we hadn t been into the lake fishing for quite a while. so that tuesday morning we took off and went up to the lake. and that wednesday morning we rode in, we set up camp and rode in. mike here was the first one to encounter the two hikers, the guy and the girl. red flags kind of went up on him. what red flags? the girl it was she had i ll let mike explain that to you what he saw. and then when we went to the lake, and then they showed up at the lake, and there was just like a square peg going into a round hole. they didn t fit. he might have been an outdoorsman in california, but he was not an outdoorsman in
and the amber alert was on the television. and i told my wife, i said, that is that girl we seen on the mountain. but there was no phone number, so i talked to my wife and i called mike and mary and we said look at the tv and see if that girl doesn t look exactly like what we seen on the mountain. they kind of confirmed that. and then i called a friend of mine in the idaho state police, tom nesbit, he used to work for me. so i had all the confidence in the world in him and i called him and told him what we d seen and what was going on. and i knew that he d get the ball rolling and keep it rolling. and then the next morning we heard on the news where they found the car exactly where we told them it would be. did you guys see the car too? we never seen the car. our trail head our trail going in t d, came to a t with a
and in that time he had moved closer to her and it looked like he had his arm around her waist. she did appear frightened, but i thought it was fear of the horses because she was wanting to move off the trail. but that encounter was very brief because we were moving up the trail at the time and they were off the side of the trail. and they did not want to talk with us. mike asked a brief question. he did say as i went past he said that s the way to travel in this country is horseback. usually when you meet people in the back country you have a pretty good encounter, you know, and talk about where they ve been and where they re going like that, but they didn t want to talk. when you parted ways, what did you all say amongst them? what were your thoughts? when we left them at the l e
in fact we want people to be inside of it, we want them to be included. also, i was unable to find out any immediate information from the alert that i received. also, i think that they should depend much more upon radio for people in the early, early mornings and late, late at night simply because, again, you don t want to be awoken by a shrieking alarm time after time after time. all right. marc, standby, wendy, standby. let s hit play again. wednesday evening no, it was thursday evening. we spent wednesday night at the trailhead. and then thursday we no, it was in the afternoon. don t know exactly what time it was. it was probably pretty late wasn t it, mike? yeah, it was about the time you called me. and then we called mike to verify it and everything. and then i immediately called the idaho state police, tom nesbit, and he got the ball rolling. and then everybody was calling us wanting information.