by Roman Dial
Then and there in Lowes Home Improvement, Peggy felt nauseous. We left empty-handed to drive straight home and read his emails carefully. I opened the July 9 thread where the words heading in off-trail tomorrow . . . 4 days in the jungle and a day to walk out spilled across my screen. My face went numb.
OH NO! He’s way overdue—fuck!
I should have been paying closer attention!
Shock washed over me. Then guilt. Guilt over the fact that I hadn’t read his email thoroughly, that I hadn’t given him the attention he deserved. That, maybe, like Peggy pointed out in nearly every argument, I spent too much time on my own trips, on my own interests.
“Peggy. This email says he should have been done, like”—I struggled with the arithmetic—“like, ten days ago! Something’s wrong!” I turned to her. Her forehead tightened, cheeks slack. She saw my terror; it increased her own.
WE JUMPED INTO action. She slid me a notebook and pen across the table, then got on the phone and called Jazz. I set to work on the computer, my hands shaking. Fighting panic and rising nausea, I googled Corcovado national park guides, looking for someone to help us.
My Spanish too poor to call, I shot off an email to Osa Corcovado Tours.
My name is Roman Dial and my son, Cody Roman Dial, age 27, is missing in Corcovado National Park. He is about 177 cm tall (5 feet 10 inches), with blue eyes, brown hair and glasses. He weighs about 63 kg (140 lbs). He should have a blue two-person tent.
He has been traveling for several months in Central America and doing treks in the jungle, always without a guide.
He emailed us on 9 July and said that he was heading into Corcovado National Park on 10 July for five days alone. He should have returned ten days ago, and he always reports back to us. But we have heard nothing and now are worried.
He wrote that he would be hiking off-trail to the east of the Los Patos to Sirena Trail. He said he’d be walking about 5 km a day for 20 km off trail, following the Rio Conte up, then crossing the mountains over to the Rio Claro and follow that to the coast.
Again he said he would be gone for 5 days and that was almost 14 days ago. Can you please advise me what I can do or how we might look for him? I do not speak Spanish, but perhaps I could call someone and speak on the phone? Attached is a photo from two years ago.
The first picture of Roman I found was from Bhutan. Smiling at the camera, he’s a little pudgy with a bit of beard, short hair, and wire-rimmed glasses, wearing a blue shirt. My arm is around him, hand on his shoulder. I attached the photo and the best map yet and hit send.
I bought an airplane ticket to leave the next day for Costa Rica. I could not stay in Alaska. I would not leave the search up to others. He was my son. My responsibility was to him. Part of the Alaskan creed is that we take care of our own. I had been on enough rescues to know our system worked. Roman had sent me his plans and a map because he knew that if something happened to him, I would come get him.
I had introduced him to the tropics, to wilderness, to world travel. No one knew better what Roman might do. But I needed experienced, reliable help we could trust. I called Gordy. A world traveler himself, he once lost six fingertips when he quit his own attempt at the summit of Mount Everest to rescue another climber on the mountain. He had also lost his father and two siblings in a tragic airplane accident.
Gordy went silent for a minute when I told him the news. He’d been on the Grand Canyon trip with Roman and me. He appreciated Roman’s toughness, wit, and modesty.
Gordy’s voice was slow and measured, fighting back emotion. “Nah, Roman, my Spanish just isn’t good enough for something like that. You’ll be better off with Thai.” Thai Verzone, his Wilderness Classic partner and protégé, had been both a Latin American studies major in college and a mountain guide in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. He speaks Spanish fluently.
Gordy went on. “You know, what I would do is get hold of Roman’s bank records. Those might say a lot about where he was, and where he was going.” This advice from a close friend helped. Peggy would try over the coming days, but it took years in the end to get the records.
I called Thai. “Thai: Roman’s missing in Costa Rica.”
“What?”
“Yeah, he wrote he’d be gone on a five-day trip in Corcovado, but he’s like ten days overdue!”
“Oh shit—ten days!”
“Listen, can you go down there with me? I need you. I’m leaving tomorrow and could really use your Spanish and jungle skills.”
Thai’s wife, Ana, had just had their baby, Maia, three months before. Thai helped Ana at home and worked at the hospital.
Peggy knew how useful Thai would be with language, wilderness, and people. She quickly volunteered: “I can watch Maia for Ana while Thai goes with you.”
I relayed this to Thai. “Peggy says she can help Ana with Maia if you can come.”
“Let me check with Ana and the clinic, but I’m pretty sure I can do it. How long will we go for?” Thai had his own life.
“If you could come down for ten days, that’d be great. Thai, I really need your help.”
Panic inched up my gorge. I choked it down. Calmness thinks clearly.
I was terrified that Roman, lost and broken in the jungle, waited for me to come get him. Hadn’t he given me very explicit directions and a map, after all?
I called the U.S. Embassy in San José, worried it might be closed. A recording said, “Push two for life and death.”
I pushed two. A voice answered and said something about a duty officer, then gave me a Mr. Zagursky’s email. I scribbled it in my notebook, then emailed the photo, map, and information to him. I found an email address for the Puerto Jiménez police and sent them the same content, adding Gordy’s suggestion to access Roman’s bank records. I told them all that I was coming down.
My body crawled with anxiety and a sense of panic held barely at bay. I wanted to be down there right now. Every minute counted. While the tropics might seem hot and idyllic, the rains are cold and the chance of rapid infection is real.
I called my boss at work: “Roman’s missing.”
Her response was immediate, empathetic. “Oh, Roman,” she said genuinely, “I am so sorry,” as if he were already dead, that I’d already lost him.
Hurt and angry, I told her, “I’m going down to find him and am not sure when I’ll be back.” What I meant was that he wasn’t dead, that she didn’t need to be sorry because I would bring him home alive.
THAT EVENING I packed jungle gear. Shoes and shirts and pants and a pack. Compass and head lamp. Stove and a cookpot. Dehydrated food. Bug-net tent and tarp. Sleeping pad and sheet. We would have to move fast. Bring only necessities.
My feelings of shock ebbed, exposing a reef of guilt. He’d written that he’d be out on the fifteenth. I was home then. I should have read his email.
I should have given him twenty-four hours, then called Costa Rica on the sixteenth to say he was twenty-four hours overdue, then flown there on the seventeenth. I could have done that.
But I didn’t. A full week had passed since I could have flown down. It was impossible not to see him suffering, waiting, wondering, Dad, where are you? I told you where I went. I said I’d be out in five days. Dad, come get me!
Hoping for the best, I emailed him: i am coming down to look for you. The subject read email please!
My flight left for Atlanta at eight-thirty at night on Thursday, July 24. All day I switched from phone to computer, scrambling to put things together. My brain struggled to function as if nothing were wrong while my heart wrested to take control and panic. Peggy, too, called and emailed friends and family, sounding the alarm. Within twenty-four hours, friends set up a fund and deposited money for our search.
The Tico Times, a Costa Rican English-language newspaper, ran a story. People reached out to help. Then, Facebook kicked in. Someone posted on an Osa-specific page about a sighting. I messaged him and he wrote back:
I am 90% sure that I saw your son based on
his picture—did he have a tan safari type outfit (shorts and shirt matching and a hat)? I remember seeing him walking alone along the road and I took him for one of the many volunteers who are always in that area and who never want a ride. I made eye contact with him and he nodded. He was looking into the woods at something that caught his attention. If you want you can call. Hopefully he is simply walking through some tough terrain out in the park and working his way back.
I ached for it to be true. But it couldn’t be Roman dressed in safari garb, turning down a ride on a road. I knew that it wasn’t. Together we had spent too many months over too many years in too many countries on too many continents for that to be the son I raised.
He was in trouble. I knew.
Chapter 21
Dondee
Dondee, MINAE headquarters, July 25, 2014.
Courtesy of the author
Thai Verzone is a good friend and my first choice for trips needing multiple skills. Son of an Italian father and a Vietnamese mother, he is a consummate traveler who blends in anywhere with his one-world look and winning smile. During his twenties, he guided clients up mountains in Alaska, Nepal, South America, even Antarctica. In his thirties, he served as a refugee-camp volunteer in Africa and the Middle East. Now in his forties, he’s a physician’s assistant in Anchorage. For a few years he visited every continent once a year, including Antarctica. He even flew to the South Pole in winter as a medic for an emergency evacuation, receiving a letter from President Obama for his efforts.
In 2011, another scientist and I were headed to western China to search for Tibetan ice worms on a month-long expedition. Three days before our departure, my collaborator called to say he couldn’t go. Minutes after hanging up, I texted Thai: Can you go to China on Tuesday?
Thai texted back a minute later. China? Sure! Let me check at the clinic.
Given leave from work, Thai applied to the Chinese Embassy for a visa. They refused his passport. “Too dirty,” they said. He would have to get another one, but felt confident he could, and would catch me in China a week later. We agreed to meet at an airport in remote Yunnan Province.
In Yunnan, he walked off the airplane with a young woman. Their body language and animated conversation said they were old friends. Spotting me, he grinned and hugged hello. “Hey, Roman! We made it!” He turned to the young woman, asking me, “Hey, could we give . . . ,” but stopped mid-question to flash his heart-melting smile at her to ask, “What was your name again?” He repeated her name and finished his question, “. . . a ride into town?”
That was Thai: making friends wherever he went, comfortable with whatever was thrown his way. It was also like Thai to drop everything and come down to help me.
BY THE TIME he and I landed in Puerto Jiménez it was Friday afternoon, July 25. The red-eye from Alaska by way of Georgia had left me dimwitted and under-slept. Having Thai along with his outdoor skills, problem-solving abilities, and collaborative nature reassured me. We would find Roman.
We headed to the Iguana Lodge, a few miles beyond Puerto Jiménez. Nestled in a beachside forest, the Iguana hosts its guests in a handful of screened-in cabanas and eclectic structures. The oldest building—the Pearl—is a restaurant and bar, with upstairs rooms and a grassy lawn fronting a palm-lined beach. The newest building is a two-story, open-plan yoga studio with a poolside veranda. Between the pool and the Pearl is the biggest building. This central structure is a postmodern hut with a round thatched roof, a cool, shady downstairs of stone tile, and an upstairs for more formal, open-air dinners. Its office has a landline, computer, and printer we would come to depend on.
Toby and Lauren Cleaver, the American couple who own the Iguana, greeted us. Parents of adult children themselves, they expressed their condolences with sympathy and a sincere desire to help. Both are well respected by their local employees and, like Thai, would be indispensable in my search for Roman. But Thai’s help would last only a few weeks. The Cleavers’ unwavering support would stretch to months and years. Iguana would serve as our base camp on nearly every trip to the Osa.
Five-foot-two, blond, and smiling, Lauren was fit and fiery and spoke fluent Spanish with a distinctly American accent. Constantly in motion, with a big heart and a sense of justice, she offered to help in any way and, unlike everyone else, she was ideally positioned to do so. Her staff of twenty from the Osa, most of whom spoke English, both liked and respected her, as did former employees who’d moved on to other jobs.
Both Lauren and Toby had been attorneys who needed to escape the ethical ambiguities they faced as defense lawyers in Colorado. They’d bought the Pearl twenty years earlier, renamed it the Iguana Lodge, tripled its size, and added a pool. The Cleavers’ sharp, practical knowledge of how Costa Rica functions, together with their extensive network of connections, would be invaluable during our search.
Thai and I drove to the office of the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE), the government agency in charge of Corcovado National Park—a low, one-story gated compound next to the airport. A uniformed man led us to a spare room with a dozen chairs and tables pushed together. A dozen or so men huddled in groups speaking softly. Thin senior MINAE officials in tan uniforms contrasted with husky, young Cruz Roja volunteers in navy vests marked by a red cross. The local police stood by silently in black boots and side arms, their ball caps emblazed with “Fuerza.” In Corcovado, where criminals are common, MINAE, Cruz Roja, and Fuerza search as teams.
Someone had put together a poster titled “Muchacho Perdido” with “Missing Person” in English just below. Roman grinned in glasses and a scraggly beard. I’d sent the photo only two days before and already it was plastered all over Puerto Jiménez with his name “Cody Roman Dial” and his weight and height in both Spanish and English. The sight of the poster everywhere both reassured and troubled me. Something was being done: people were looking. But Roman was missing and that left me anxious to do something myself. Standing there in the MINAE building was not enough.
By now the police should know where Roman stayed in Puerto Jiménez.
Given the email I’d sent, I expected a debriefing from the Cruz Roja about their search up the Rio Conte, a thirty-minute drive away. Instead, I was questioned by a pudgy, balding, middle-aged man wearing an orange shirt over long sleeves. Like me, his face unshaven, he perspired in the un-air-conditioned room. He introduced himself as Dondee.
I reached out and shook his limp, damp hand. Thai would translate, as my Spanish was useless. I thanked Dondee for helping. He nodded, eyes closed, and asked, “When was the last time you saw Cody?” It sounded wrong to hear Roman called Cody, a name used by his aunts, grandmothers, and those who only knew him from official documents.
“The last time I saw him was in Mexico, in January. But he emailed me every couple of weeks since then. In his last email he said Corcovado required a guide. But he didn’t want a guide. He didn’t use them in six months of traveling.” I recited the detailed route information he’d sent about the Conte and Rio Claro. “He should have been back ten days ago.”
As Thai translated, Dondee pursed his lips as if he didn’t believe me—or worse, that he wasn’t listening. He responded by asking if there’d been any unusual behavior, as if Roman was just a twenty-something kid who hadn’t been in touch with his parents for a while. Hell, I’d gone months without contacting my parents when I’d been his age. But Roman wasn’t me.
“Roman always tells us where he is going. Then he tells us when he gets back. This time we have heard nothing about getting back. That’s unusual. That’s why we’re here,” I reiterated, annoyed.
Dondee motioned for us to sit. He leaned back, arms folded. Thai translated: “He’s asking if Roman does drugs.” This took me aback. Has Roman picked up new habits?
If Roman was anything like I’d been in my twenties, then he’d tried plenty of drugs. But he had always seemed uninterested in them. As Peggy would say, “He takes good of care of his body. He doesn’t want to put drugs into
his system.” In Anchorage, he lifted regularly at the gym and liked to run. He drank alcohol, sometimes dipped tobacco, and smoked an occasional marijuana or tobacco cigarette, I suspected. But the “dirty hippy” comments in his emails suggested he hadn’t started using.
“No, he doesn’t do drugs. He drinks. But of course, anything’s possible. It would be a big change in character, though.”
Dondee went on. “Cody was seen last week walking on a trail to Carate with a well-known drug dealer. He came back to town, paid him at an ATM in Puerto Jiménez, then left to go surfing in Matapalo.”
What? This can’t be true. Now I was shocked.
Did he make up his trips across El Petén and La Moskitia? Was going-into-Corcovado-without-a-guide a lie? Why hasn’t he written us? It’s been weeks. Travel changes people, for both good and bad, but how can this be our son?
Dondee’s story didn’t fit. Roman knew more about tropical ecology at age eleven than most of my college students. He hung out with friends he’d known since kindergarten, packrafted rivers, studied molecular ecology. He hugged his family and friends. To change his character so fundamentally, then lie about it to us all seemed to me not just unlikely, but fucking impossible. Besides, why would he need a guide now after walking across El Petén alone?
With Thai translating, I tried to explain again that Roman wouldn’t have taken a guide on a trail. All his emails had emphasized that popular tourist destinations held no interest in themselves. They were access points for a string of creative, independent adventures across Central America. But showing Dondee emails or explaining Roman’s travel style didn’t change his mind. The more I tried to persuade Dondee, the more he resisted.
I wanted Dondee to help. He and the others were there to help. I was so very grateful to them for that. Still, the Cody they described and the Roman I knew were two very different people. Conventional wisdom holds that parents simply don’t know their children well enough to predict their behavior. But with Dondee there was more. He had a self-importance beyond his role as leader of the search. Then, I realized, we had met before.
