iPod Nano leads to rescue of lost man

Saturday, November 18, 2006

A lost mushroom picker was rescued after a search team saw the faint glow of his iPod Nano early Friday morning.

Twenty-five year old Pini Nou of Vancouver, WA was cold, fatigued, and complaining of sore feet when he was spotted by a member of the Benton County Search and Rescue unit in the deep woods of Southwestern Benton County at 1:12am, according to acting Benton County Emergency Management Coordinator Peggy Peirson. Nou was lost in the Dawson Creek and Oliver Creek roads area.

It took resuers a full 22 minutes to reach Nou, due to extremely thick underbrush. Without a flashlight, Nou was trying to use the faint glow of the screen of his iPod Nano as a light source. It took several more hours to get him safely out of the forrest, and rescuers did not get back home until nearly 6 a.m.

Nou had joined his mother, an experienced outdoorswoman, for a mushroom hunt.

“She comes down here regularly, and she likes to pick mushrooms,” said Peirson. “Her son has never done this before, and she said, ‘He’s a city boy.’”

In the end, Peirson said the happy ending was something the searchers would treasure — a needed morale booster after the lingering disappointment of the huge and unsuccessful effort to find Brooke Wilburger two years before.