Greatly thankful: 90-year-old man spends night lost in stranded Jeep

Ellen Richardson said Monday that her dad, Theodosia resident Vince Quosig, 90, wouldn’t have survived another night – lost, alone and cold in his stranded vehicle – if Ozark County rescuers hadn’t worked diligently Saturday to find him.

“He would be dead if it wasn’t for them,” she told the Times. “I’m so thankful to them, because he wouldn’t have made it. We greatly thank all the people who spent their resources and time to find him.” 

Quosig’s ad-venture started Friday evening in Springfield, where he had visited his daughter and her husband, Peter, and had also gone to a doctor’s appointment.

“They sent him for x-rays, and by the time that was over, it was dark. We were concerned about him driving back down there [to his home west of Theodosia], but he refused to stay with us,” Ellen said. “He was supposed to call us when he got home.”

 Her dad had moved to Ozark County 27 years ago from New York State, she said, settling on a beautiful, remote piece of land on Peter Cave Hollow, off NN Highway, which is off P Highway. “My husband’s mother had a place in Protem,” she said. “He came to visit and fell in love with the area. Don Smiley at Sierra Ozarks [Real Estate] found him 7 acres. He said he was moving here to be closer to me, but I live in Springfield, so it’s not that close.”

‘He was off-off-off road’

As her dad drove home Friday night, he accidentally missed the turn onto County Road 636, where he lives. Instead, he continued on down NN Highway, heading toward Bull Shoals Lake. And, in the darkness, when the pavement ended he kept going.

“He kept going and ended up going off the gravel road – brush, bushes, rocks – he just kept going, and he ended up with the car stuck on a log, sitting at a 45-degree angle,” Ellen said. “He was off-off-off-road.”

Luckily, the car was still running, so Quosig spent the night inside it with the heater on to keep him worn in Saturday morning’s frigid temperatures that plunged into the teens. 

“He called us at 9:30 the next morning and said, ‘You won’t believe what happened to me. My car is stuck, and I don’t know where I’m at,’” Ellen said.

Her husband called the Ozark County Sheriff’s Office, and rescue efforts began. Ellen’s husband told Quosig to call 911, but that call went to Marion County, Arkansas, which wasn’t able to locate him through their 911 system. Sheriff’s dispatchers in Ozark County and in Marion County then tried to locate him by pinging the nearest cell phone tower, but that didn’t work either.

Theodosia Area Volunteer Fire Department was dispatched, along with Ozark County Sheriff’s deputies and members of the Ozark County Search and Rescue team, all volunteers, from Thornfield VFD as well as from Lick Creek, Caney Mountain and Tecumseh VFDs on the east side of the county. 

“We were all covering all those roads, just running as far as we could down every road over there,” said Lick Creek VFD chief Jerry Rowlett. 

 They hoped to spot Quosig’s dark-colored Jeep Liberty, but the day passed, and they found no sign of Quosig or his vehicle, which had finally run out of gas. 

Quosig, describing his surroundings to one of the dispatchers on his cell phone, said he could see “two floats,” and that description was passed on to the search team. But what did that mean?

‘It had to be the lake’

Lick Creek VFD firefighter Bill Townsend stopped by Turkey Creek Resort and told owner Robert Edwards about the lost neighbor. When Edwards heard that Quosig had mentioned “two floats,” that gave him the idea that “it had to be the lake,” he said. 

Edwards and Townsend set off in one of the resort’s boats. “We covered every cove,” Edwards said. 

Meanwhile, a short distance away, Dale Schofield was deer hunting on his family’s land. 

“Somebody texted me that an old man was lost in Dugginsville,” he said. 

Schofield came out of his deer stand and headed for his truck. 

“When I left the deer woods, [Tecumseh VFD firefighter] J. B. Duke stopped and told me the old man was more in my area, instead of Dugginsville. He said he was somewhere that he could see two pontoon boats,” said Schofield. “I started calling neighbors asking if anyone had two pontoon boats, but nobody did.”

Somehow the two “floats” Quosig had said he was seeing had become “pontoon boats” as the word spread among the search team members. 

Schofield, who grew up and has lived all his life on the land there “knows it like the back of his hand,” one of the other team members said. 

Schofield knew the other team members had headed down all the roads in the area, but he had an idea about an area they might have missed. “I asked the guys who had been down [County Road] 647 if they had checked both sets of boat docks down there. Then I drove down to see for myself. Two or three people had already driven down 647, but there’s also a 647A, and you have to turn right in somebody’s yard. If you don’t know it’s there, you would miss that road. Plus, there are so many leaves down now, you can’t hardly see the road at all.,” he said.

‘We’ve got him!’

By then it was dark, after 6 p.m., and as Schofield neared the lake on the tucked-away road, he saw two bright lights shining from the boat Edwards and Townsend were in. 

“I hollered out the window, ‘Need help?’ and they said, ‘We’ve got him!’” Schofield said. 

The two “floats” Quosig had mentioned were the two privately owned boat docks in that cove. 

As darkness descended, Edwards and Townsend had spotted Quosig’s Jeep up the hill a short distance from lake. They called to him, and he answered. But, amazingly, the former Marine told his would-be rescuers he would be fine where he was until morning.

Edwards and Townsend weren’t having it. They headed up the hill and gently worked Quosig  down the bank to their boat. “He was so tired and stiff, he could barely step over the rocks and stuff,” Schofield said. The men eased him into the boat and motored across the cove, where Schofield had parked by the two docks. 

“We got him up out of the boat, and then we were walking him to the end of the dock. There was a board from the catwalk onto the bank. I had on rubber boots, so I kind of stepped down into the water to help him. Edwards was behind him, guiding him,” Schofield said.

“And then he just stopped right there in the middle of that board and said, ‘Ain’t a one of you guys wished me a happy birthday,’” Schofield said, laughing. “We said, ‘Oh, is it your birthday?’ and he said, ‘No. But it’s coming up, and I’ll be 91.’ He’s a tough old bird. He sure is.” 

Quosig was glad to get in Schofield’s warm truck. As they drove back to the staging area, where both the Ozark County Ambulance and the Air Evac helicopter waited for him, Quosig told Schofield he had moved here from New York. He had a good pension, he said, and he’d bought a pretty house here, and he’d had a lady friend. “But she’d gone to visit her brother awhile back, and she died while she was there,” Schofield said. “I was hating it for him.” 

Then Quosig said something that “really hit home” with Schofield, a former deputy sheriff and now a pastor. “He said, ‘Now that I can have anything I want, I don’t want anything,’” Schofield said.

‘Can’t say thank you enough’

Quosig let the ambulance personnel check his vital signs, but he insisted he was fine, and that’s all the medical attention he would allow. Air Evac flew back to Mountain Home without him, and J. B. Duke and one of the deputies drove him home. When they got there, they realized Quosig had left his keys in the stranded car.

Not to worry. One of the helpers picked the lock and let Quosig inside.

The next day, Sunday, Ellen, 65, her husband Peter, 71, and their 30-year-old son, Kevin Richardson, who lives in Republic, came to retrieve the Jeep. 

 “There was no road at all where he was,” Ellen said. “He could have gone into the lake. I hate to think what might have happened. We had to move rocks, and my son used the chain saw and the come-along to move the log. We worked for four hours getting the car out. And then it had a flat tire, I guess from driving over all the rocks.”

But now the car is running again, and her dad is recovering from his ordeal. 

Ellen said Monday that she, her husband and their son “appreciate everything everyone did, every single one of them. I pray for them, and I appreciate them. I can’t say thank you enough.”