A Nevada woman is lucky to be alive after a Joshua Tree man found her after she was stranded for a week in a remote area of the the Mojave Desert. Joan Scolari, 73, had rented a car in Las Vegas Tuesday, November 24, and planned to drive to Lake Havasu to join her family for Thanksgiving. When she didn’t arrive, her family reported her missing to Sparks, Nevada, police. Managing editor Tami Roleff talked with Scolari’s rescuer and says the story is one big lucky coincidence…
Kevin “Chili” Walker was on his way home to Joshua Tree after participating in the two-day, 500-mile Los Angeles to Barstow to Las Vegas endurance ride. Walker, a member of a volunteer search-and-rescue team for the off-road event, had delayed his return home by two days, and decided to drive remote dirt roads through the Mojave Desert to Joshua Tree on his Honda XR400 dirt bike. As he neared the mining ghost town of Hart, something caught his eye.
“All of a sudden I see something a little white and shiny in the middle of the desert and I figure I’ll head over that way and see what it is.”
What he saw was a woman standing next to a white car.
“I slow down, give a little wave, she just kind of softly waved back.”
Thinking that the woman was okay, Walker kept going. But something made him look back.
“I looked back over my shoulder and that’s when I was finally able to see the profile of her vehicle and recognized that it was in fact stuck and she was motioning for me to come back and help.”
Turns out the woman was Joan Scolari, who had left Las Vegas six days earlier.
“She was like, oh my god! I’m so glad you stopped. I’ve been here since Tuesday. And being that it was Monday, my response was, ‘Excuse me, WHAT?’”
Walker said Scolari had been following her rental car’s GPS, which decided to take her to Lake Havasu through the old abandoned dirt roads in the desert where there was no cell phone service.
Scolari’s car had gotten high centered on a sand berm, and she was stuck. She survived by drinking water she found coming out of a pipe. After joking about drinking sewage, Walker gave her some of his water and made sure she was okay because she wasn’t dressed for temps that dipped down to about 28 degrees overnight. “She was wearing a thin sweater on. She was starting her car every hour for a few minutes, for about 10 to 15 minutes to try and get it warmed up.”
Walker helped get her car off the berm and then followed her car back to a main paved road that took her to Searchlight, where she was able to contact her family.
Walker rated the chances of finding a lost and stranded motorist on remote dirt roads in the Mojave Desert.
“Slim to none.”
JOSHUA TREE MAN RESCUES WOMAN LOST IN THE DESERT FOR A WEEK
