He was moving slower and slower,
Joanna’s 3 p.m. deadline having long
since vanished. Eventually, the sun
slipped below the mountain ridge be-
hind him and the forest turned pitch-
black. He hadn’t brought a flashlight.
His quivering legs felt as if they’d
stomped at least 15 miles.
There was only one thing to say:
“McDonnell, you’ve really done it this
time. You are one dumb son of a b——.”B
ill McDonnell Jr. was entering
the football stadium at James
Madison University when he got
a text from his niece. She said she’d lost
contact with her grandfather around
2 p.m. and no one had heard from him
in hours. “I’m sure he ignored you and
took the shortcut,” Bill Jr. told her.
An avid hiker himself, Bill Jr. knew
his father could cover ten miles with
all his winter gear on. But he had be-
come more forgetful in his 90s. They
agreed to call 911.
Bill Jr. headed to Winchester, where
he found his mother in a panic, ri-
fling through paperwork. She said
she wanted to make sure she had the
necessary documents in case her hus-
band was dead.
Capt. Wesley Dellinger of the Shen-
andoah County Sheriff ’s Office sprang
into action when he got the call about
a missing elderly man: not quite six
feet tall, 200 pounds, lost in the for-
est. Having made a few wrong turns
in these woods himself, he felt for the
guy. “You think you’ve got it figuredout,” he told one of his deputies, “then
all of a sudden you don’t.”
He ordered a command post to be
set up near the Laurel Run trailhead,
and by 6:30 p.m., he’d assembled per-
sonnel from within an hour’s radius in
every direction. But Bill’s last location
was in an area far too rugged and re-
mote to attempt a full ground search,
especially under a moonless sky.
So the sheriff sent his deputies out
to cruise the highways and back roads,
hoping Bill might have found his way
to a thoroughfare. Around 9 p.m., a
helicopter from the Fairfax County
Police Department arrived.
It was about 9:45 p.m. when Bill
heard the whoop-whoop-whoop of
a helicopter and looked up from his
makeshift bed. He had never minded
bedding down in dirt—make a little
sleeping mat from branches (a trick
he learned in the Army) and you’d be
sawing logs all night.
Now, as the light from the chopper
danced closer, Bill struggled to rouse
his achy joints and get to his feet. He
managed to lift his orange hunter’s
hat to the sky and wave. “I’m here!”
he yelled.
The chopper hovered directly above
him. But the mix of tall trees and low
laurel canopies were too dense for
its searchlight to penetrate. The light
dimmed, and the whir of the heli-
copter blades softened. Bill guessed
they wouldn’t be back until morning.
He tried to go to sleep but couldn’t
quiet his head. He hated that searchrd.com 103Drama in Real Life Reader’s Digest