The Cokeville Miracle

by Hartt

  Returning teachers were no less agonized by fears that a child might have been left behind. As each of them safely escaped, he or she was besieged by anxious parents, all with the same question: “Where is my child?”

  Kliss Sparks could be heard above the general clamor, shouting, “Fourth graders, over here!” Several students volunteered to look for the ones Mrs. Sparks couldn’t find.

  Jack Mitchell was assembling his sixth graders, while Jean tried to take a mental count of her first graders. Some were still missing.

  Several of the Main Street homes that bordered the schoolyard had been evacuated earlier when officials realized how powerful the bomb was. These homes were turned into temporary treatment centers as the EMTs set up triages for the hostages. Those who did not need medical attention telephoned home, trying to find their parents. More often, their parents were already there, searching through the escaping children one by one, trying to be calm as searches sometimes stretched into hours. As the initial shock of the bomb blast and then the frantic escape wore off, students and teachers alike began to feel the extent of the injuries they had received.

  From the moment the bomb exploded, EMTs, firemen, and lawmen prepared and then attempted to get inside the building. Principal Excell had been on the telephone, talking to a newspaper reporter at the critical moment. “The bomb’s exploded!” he yelled into the telephone, accidentally dropping it. Immediately, he picked it up and called the town hall, repeating the identical message. Sheriff’s Deputy Earl Carroll didn’t need to be told. Those at the town hall heard the explosion clearly. It was impossible not to imagine the sounds of children screaming.

  Excell grabbed his fire extinguisher and ran down the hall, but as soon as he saw the huge cloud of smoke bursting from Room 4, he gave up. Running outside, he saw law officers running toward him. Excell yelled at them to hurry. “I can hear ammo exploding,” he said. “They must be shooting the children!”

  While some of the officers were trying to get into Room 4, others were frantically trying to keep citizens from overrunning the building. Parents broke from the police cordon toward school entrances in a wall of anxiety. One father ran forward, cursing loudly. “I’m going in there after that SOB myself,” he yelled. Police officers begged townspeople to stay back so that EMTs and firemen could get through.

  Patrolman Brad Anderson knew he had to get in quickly. If David Young was there and still armed, he could be shooting randomly, just to take as many with him as possible. Anderson knew that half the problem would be the room itself—in the fiery and smoky aftermath, it would be just as easy to mistake a teacher or older student for Young as it would be to let David slip by, thinking he was one of them. Anderson wanted to prevent either of those things from happening.

  He checked his bulletproof vest and drew his service revolver. Sheriff’s Deputy Greg Goodman joined him, and the two stepped through the double doors into the school. Their first encounter was with a shadowy figure who fit the general description of David Young but who turned out to be the father who had been threatening to “go get” David Young. How he had gotten inside they couldn’t be sure, but he was ordered out immediately and told he was lucky to be alive. His son, it turned out, was already on the way home—despite his ordeal—pedaling there on his own bike.

  Patrolman Anderson didn’t know that Police Chief Cal Fredrickson had returned and come directly to the school, still in his civilian clothes. He was already in the building but coming from a different direction, moving toward the other two. Deputy Goodman, who lived in Kemmerer, didn’t know Chief Fredrickson well, and the two men drew their pistols on each other as their paths converged. A second deadly accident was narrowly avoided as Anderson identified the men to each other.

  Anderson and Goodman were now able to move toward Room 4. Reaching it, Anderson opened the door while Goodman propped a chair against it. Brad had already decided that rushing into the center of the room would be wiser than peering around the corner of the door. The gunman would be seeing them against clear daylight, where they would only be viewing an atmosphere the consistency of pea soup.

  Just as they opened the door, the men heard a gunshot. Before they could react, layers of thick, oily smoke poured out. Anderson, unable to locate an air pack before going in, had never found breathing so difficult. The fumes were both piercing and unavoidable. He moved back, followed by Goodman, and the two men pondered their next move. Then, from inside the room came a second shot. The door spring, which had begun pushing at the chair, forced it away completely. The door slammed shut.

  Despite their need to get inside, both men decided to wait at least briefly for the smoke to clear. While they waited, someone at the far end of the hallway turned off the alarm bell. Earl Carroll had located the proper key. As they recovered their ability to breathe normally, Anderson and Goodman talked quietly, keeping a wary eye on both ends of the corridor. Suddenly, a voice boomed down the hallway. “We’ve found one subject dead in the bathroom!”

  Sheriff’s Deputy Randy White had located an air pack and gotten safe access to Room 4 just before Anderson and Goodman arrived. He could see no one moving about, so he approached the restroom door cautiously and pushed it open a crack. When this produced no response, he carefully peeked around the door. A man’s body was slumped with its leg pressed against the doorway. This must be David Young.

  Chapter Five

  Personal Impacts

  This is the kind of entry no one—not in her wildest imaginations—figures she would make in a journal. . . . Our son is one of the hostages.” This was my wife’s journal entry May 18, 1986, two days after the bomb went off.

  On the day of the event, our high school-aged daughter, Jenny, had run frantically into the house from the bus stop. Sobbing and calling almost hysterically to her mother, she gave the terrifying news.

  “Did you hear? Don’t you know what’s happened?” Jenny cried. She and her best friend, Carrie Anderson, were confused and grief-stricken. Their faces displayed the stunned disbelief they felt. “Some people with bombs are holding the elementary school hostage! They’re going to hold them for ten days!”

  “My mind went blank,” wrote my wife, Judene, in her journal. “I was annoyed with the girls for going too far with one of their pranks. This was, well, just too absurd! They’re full of pranks, but their grief was all too real. I had to believe them, yet I was numb with disbelief.

  “I sat down with them, trying to comfort them while at the same time trying to sort this out in my head. Nothing sorted.

  “I felt so . . . alone, confused, frustrated. In desperation, I fell on my knees and pleaded for help that the children would somehow find the courage they needed to withstand this ordeal. I felt relief—I was afraid to feel assured,” the journal entry concluded.

  I hadn’t seen my wife in five days. For the first time, I had commuted home early for the weekend from Provo, Utah, where I was working as advisor to the student newspaper at Brigham Young University.

  The only hint I had of anything wrong came as I approached Cokeville and headed toward my home about six miles north of town. A normally conservative neighbor sped past me going about eight miles per hour in a sixty-five mile per hour zone. I thought I noted a worried look on his face, but figured it was just a personal matter. Instinctively, I checked my own speedometer and continued driving. It seemed like a peaceful afternoon. There was no particular reason to hurry.

  From home, Judene had just watched two ambulances and a police car speed past on the highway heading for town. As I turned down our driveway, she was conversing with Cindy Dayton, who had been a substitute teacher at the high school that day. Her tear-streaked face showed her desperate desire to just “wake up from this whole thing.”

  Spotting me, my wife came running up the driveway. As she threw herself into my embrace with more intensity than ever before, I first thought this was an extra special kind of a greeting. But seeing her face filled with anguish kept me from enjoying the moment
.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked, looking into her eyes.

  “No! The grade-school kids are being held hostage by someone with a bomb. . . . They want millions of dollars. They have guns. . . .” The scenario gushed out in a flood.

  “What?” I found myself saying.

  “Our son is in there!”

  When my wife told me that, I first envisioned an idle threat, a fake bomb. Passersby who maybe had too much to drink.

  My mind turned to the practical; we would need to take sleeping bags and several days’ food to wait at the schoolyard entrance, no matter how long it took. If the extortionists took a child to make their getaway . . . well, it would complicate everyone getting out of this unharmed.

  It would do no good to speculate. We needed more details about this dilemma.

  The two of us were joined by another high school-age daughter, Cindy, and Joanne Metcalfe, a neighbor who had three children in the classroom. The two mothers shared a hug; it was the only way to express the feelings words couldn’t. Joanne’s husband, Jack, had taken his high school civics class on a field trip. Knowing she needed support from someone in this grotesque circumstance, we invited her to come inside the house.

  Joanne called the school. When Principal Max Excell answered, Joanne quickly blurted out, “What’s going on there?”

  “It’s true! There’s a man here with a bomb. I can’t tell you much more—I’ve got to go.”

  None of us had any idea at the time how much pressure Excell was under to make every moment count.

  In our living room, there was heavy silence mixed with confusion as we attempted not to assume the worst. Then, Joanne’s high school-aged son, Aaron, burst into our living room. “The bomb went off! Boom! I just heard on the radio!”

  The two families headed toward town in separate vehicles. I thought of Kam’s smile the week before as he showed me his tree hut, his proud look when he brought in a gallon of milk from the dairy barn on a subzero morning, the last picture he had drawn of a “super car of the future.” The future. . . .

  I also thought of the children now being held hostage, the ones I had taught in the Honors English class mid-year. These fifth and sixth graders put out their own newspaper, “wondering what we can use for exciting news.” Several of the students had also enthusiastically created stories that might have been published in magazines elsewhere. One was a detective story about children in a small town being kidnapped. What a wonderful imagination, I had thought. The teachers—I had worked with them daily. My wife and I saw them frequently in almost every community activity. What was happening to them?

  Probably every vehicle hurrying to the school grounds held people with similar thoughts. Many talked openly and freely of their anxiety to find out more, and when they did, all spoke of their feelings of helplessness. Most said unashamed prayers on behalf of the hostages and their families.

  As I parked my car at the curb just outside the school grounds, I saw Dr. Allen Lowe, Lincoln County School District Superintendent, step from his vehicle. His face was ashen. Few words could be found. A voice on the radio came through the silence—something about parents searching for their children. Here in front of me, I saw it happening.

  Children stood dazed on the schoolhouse lawn or nearby homes with the look of incredulity at being alive. Quilts and blankets were hastily gathered from nearby homes. They were being wrapped compassionately and carefully around shivering youngsters, many of whom were waiting for a turn at oxygen tanks. There were ambulances everywhere, from everywhere. Children in some families were taken to hospitals in five different communities: Montpelier, Idaho; Afton, Kemmerer, and Evanston, Wyoming; and Logan, Utah. Some were later taken to a Salt Lake City burn center.

  Several children with blackened faces and arms were coughing from the effects of smoke inhalation.

  It struck us immediately that though this was an unbelievable event, all of the chaos was somehow transforming into precise organization. If some fathers, as was rumored, were carrying deer rifles, there were none now to be seen. Everyone was functioning in his or her own field of expertise. We recognized EMTs Kevin and Glenna Walker, who had three children in the smoke-filled building. Teenagers were handing out cups of water.

  Even though paramedics came from different counties and nearby states, they were working as if coordinating a drill. Many frantic faces wore the same wide-eyed expression. For most, the horror of the event had not yet been fully realized, nor would it be for some time yet.

  My wife and I jumped out of the car and ran toward the center of activity. Looking through the frenzied crowd, I saw Kamron. He had been calling us from the Taylors’ home on Main Street. It must have been an extremely lonely feeling for him to get no answer. He knew his mother would be worrying. His face showed no signs of burns. Just the blankness of shock. Feelings and reality had not yet meshed together.

  I raised my hand and called to him. He said I loomed out of the crowd “like a telephone pole.” His eyes could see nothing else but his parents, and he came running. He reached his mother first. There were no words. Just an ecstatic embrace.

  Later, mother and son looked at a photograph of that memorable reunion. The picture, taken by a television photographer, captured the elation and relief of the moment. It was circulated on network broadcasts and picked up by a wire service. The look on their faces so effectively told the story of this drama taking place that it ran in several newspapers across the country.

  Chapter Six

  Angels Intervene

  Upon finding David Young’s body slumped on the floor in the bathroom, Sheriff’s Deputy Randy White took the precaution of placing his handcuffs around the man’s wrists. He also removed the weapons in the bathroom, including those on David’s body. Beyond that, he disturbed nothing, knowing the medical examiner would need the site intact.

  Randy’s next responsibility was to look for other bodies, a task he dreaded. “I had read many reports of children hiding in fear in out-of-the-way places following fires and explosions. Other lawmen and I now began searching all the little hiding places,” he reported.

  Chief Fredrickson and Earl Carroll had not heard Randy White call out and were thus searching the building in case David Young was holed up somewhere else. Word was passed to Principal Excell outside that the building was secure. One critical phase of the day’s work was over.

  Firefighters and EMTs had also been trying to get to the schoolroom, knowing that there still might be people inside who could be saved if the fire and smoke were controlled. As the firemen hooked up their hoses, EMT Kevin Walker thought he heard two shots. Hoses were directed at the windows, but it was soon clear that too little water was getting into the room. Still not knowing whether it was safe to approach the windows, one of the EMTs moved to the larger section above and discovered it didn’t open. Barely hesitating, he located a piece of metal pipe and broke the glass, wrestling out the steel frame with his bare hands. Now the firemen could get the water where it was needed.

  As they manned the hoses, they thought they saw an adult woman’s body on the floor near the far wall. As first it appeared she might be overcome with smoke inhalation. One of the EMTs thought she might still be saved with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. “But we soon realized the futility,” Kevin Walker said. “Air being breathed in was escaping through a hole in her head.” The whole top of her skull was missing.

  Fireman Allen Burton feared it was his sister, kindergarten teacher Kim Kasper. To make identification easier, the woman’s body was pulled through the window and carried on a blanket to the lawn. Adult hostages were asked to look at the body to help make identification certain. All agreed. “That’s the woman who was holding us hostage,” they told investigators. Though badly burned, her face was still recognizable.

  While the crucial identifications of David and Doris Young were being made—allowing lawmen to verify that the crisis was officially over—Lowell and Eva Clark were still searching frantical
ly for Christy. They had split up to cover more territory and were now wondering if police would let them into the school to search for her personally. Before trying to get that permission, however, Eva was approached by a friend who had been entrusted with a message for her: Lowell had found their daughter alive. She was burned—he didn’t know how badly—and was being taken by ambulance to Star Valley Hospital in Afton, Wyoming, fifty miles away. Lowell had located her just in time to ride along. Greatly relieved, Eva quickly arranged to leave for Afton herself.

  While the hostages had by far the more serious injuries—Deputy Ron Hartley, for instance, learned that all four of his grade-school children had been taken to Bear Lake Memorial Hospital in Montpelier—those assigned to search and restore order also suffered from the experience. One of the lawmen was hospitalized for smoke inhalation. Patrolman Anderson was treated for nearly an hour on the grounds of the school for the same problem. As the crisis phase passed and the search and recovery phase moved forward, parents continued to look for missing children, slowly sorting out who had been taken to which hospital and why.

  Two of the most badly burned, Billie Jo Hutchinson and Tina Morfeld, were rushed to expert care immediately. In time, seventy-nine of the hostages were hospitalized and the most critical were transferred to the University of Utah Burn Center in Salt Lake City.

  Normal human error occasionally crept in, making already tense and hurting people dig even deeper for patience and stamina. Colleen King, already at the hospital in Montpelier visiting her sick father, was told to stand by: her sons had been burned from a bomb explosion at their school in Cokeville and were on their way to the hospital. Only after waiting an hour and half for them to arrive did Colleen learn that Montpelier was the wrong destination—they had been taken to the hospital in Kemmerer.