Had John Utsey and his two children not taken a hike on Windsor Trail towards the Santa Fe Baldy in mid-August of 2020, one man’s rescue mission might have just been a body recovery.

The hiker – who has not been identified in the press – had gone out on the trail two weeks earlier and hadn’t come back.

Utsey’s daughter had gone up ahead on the trail when the former Marine shouted out to her.

But in return, he heard a man calling for help in addition to his daughter’s voice. He was far off-trail but after 20 minutes of shouting back and forth, they found him down a hillside.

The hiker – who Utsey said was over 50 – was in rough shape, injured and delirious, unable to walk because he had hurt his back.

But that wouldn’t be the end of his ordeal.

“He was lying beside a creek–his legs didn’t–he couldn’t stand he couldn’t move; he was delirious. So he wasn’t making much sense,” Utsey continued, “His lips were all chapped to the point they were bleeding. His tongue was swollen; he was super gaunt and skinny. I was like this guy really needs help,” Utsey told KRQE.

Utsey needed to call for help but didn’t have cell service. There was no way he would be able to get to the man as well as the kids off the trail safely, so the family gave the hiker their water, power drinks, and trail snacks and headed back to call 911.

Santa Fe firefighters arrived shortly after the call and Utsey gave them the hiker’s exact GPS coordinates before heading home and letting the professionals handle the rescue.

But there was no rescue.

Authorities had called off the search because they couldn’t find the injured hiker despite the location data.

“We searched as best as we could and called out,” said Captain Nathan Garcia of the Santa Fe Fire Department. “We did not get any type of response. I don’t know if we didn’t hear him or he didn’t hear us.”

When Utsey got the call from state police asking for more information, he couldn’t just do nothing. He told the Santa Fe New Mexican that, at first, he thought the man had summoned the strength to crawl out, but since he was 12-13 miles from the trailhead, Utsey had a hard time believing that could be the case.

“So, I’m laying there like, this guy is still in the mountains. So, at 9 o’clock Sunday morning I get in and put my hiking boots back on and hike back and he was exactly where I left him,” he told the local news.

Just before noon, he reunited with the man, giving him more water and some beef jerky before calling 911 yet again. But this time it took hours for the crews to arrive.

At 4 PM, Utsey himself led a team directly to the man’s location.

They were shocked to find that he was indeed out there for two weeks – and still alive.

“Never had we found somebody who had been out for that long,” said Garcia . “It’s hard to say. The human body can do some amazing things sometimes but I don’t think he had very much left in him. He seemed kind of at the end when we did actually encounter him.”

The hiker’s body was so cold that rescuers lit a campfire and warmed him up before they moved him out.

12-year-old Jocelyn Utsey credits the rescue to her dad’s booming voice, calling the family “naturally loud people.” Plenty of other hikers had been on the trail, but she believes her father loudly summoning her was possibly all he had heard in weeks.

Utsey thinks the man survived because he had on enough layers.

“He probably slept through most of the days because it was warm enough to sleep and shivered through most of the nights,” Utsey said. “He probably had to roll over to drink water from the creek and then roll back to get away from the cold because he was so weak.”

No further information about the hiker has been released, but the Utsey family has quite a story to tell when the kids go back to school this year.

Be sure to scroll down below for more on the story and an interview with John Utsey.

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Source: KRQE, Sante Fe New Mexican, YouTube – KRQE