Fox Hills Elementary School students who assembled to learn what to do if they are lost had plenty of questions for one of their classmates, 10-year-old Joshua Dennis.
They and all of Utah spent five anxious days last September while rescuers searched for Joshua after he became separated from a group of Boy Scouts during a trip led by his father through an abandoned mine.Tuesday marked the first time Joshua told his story to the entire school, which had gathered for a presentation on how to survive being lost that was given by a volunteer with the Rocky Mountain Rescue Dogs.
Wearing a bright red T-shirt from the rescue organization with the motto, "Search Work Is For The Dogs," the young boy described how he found himself alone in the mine.
"There were four Boy Scouts, my dad and I. We were walking down the mine," Joshua said, speaking rapidly as cameras from local television stations zoomed in on him.
"Three of the Boy Scouts ran off. My dad took one of them back. He couldn't see well in the darkness. He took the flashlight," he said, explaining that he tried to follow the boys who left.
"Then I couldn't keep up with them and I couldn't see and I tried to go and find my way out," Joshua continued. "I turned around in the dark and went back further and further, and then I climbed up on a ledge."
That's where searchers found him five days later. He was cold, tired and hungry but, except for minor frostbite that kept him off his feet for several days, unhurt.
Joshua was praised for staying put on the ledge and calling out to searchers, who later said it was hearing his voice that enabled three of them to find him after many had given up.
"He was smart to have stayed there," Barbara Altum, a volunteer with Rocky Mountain Rescue Dogs, told the hundreds of boys and girls who listened intently to the story.
Altum had just instructed the children to "hug a tree" if they ever became lost outdoors. Finding a tree near a clearing and clinging to it increases a child's chances of being found.
Her presentation also stressed other lessons in outdoor survival, including carrying a garbage-can-size trash bag that can be used as rain gear in an emergency.
While Altum's audience paid close attention to her slide presentation and demonstrations, which were made with Jingo, the search dog, by her side, many of the children's questions were about Joshua.