WATCH ABOVE: Idaho Boy Scout’s skills help save his father’s life after serious hiking accident. Bonnie Shelton reports.
Thirteen-year-old Idaho native Charlie Wilstead Finlayson is one heck of a Boy Scout – and he can prove it to you if you ever get crushed by a ‘refrigerator-sized’ boulder.
Finlayson and his 52-year-old father, David, were in the middle of a 12-day-long hike through the mountainous wilderness near Eagle, a suburb of Boise, when a boulder came crashing down.
“The boulder fell on him [David] and then he kind of tumbled down like 20 or 30 more feet,” Charlie explained to KTVB.
The accident left David with a broken left arm and leg, a large gash on his shin and a protruding bone, according to NBC.
That’s when all the knowledge Charlie learned from Robert Baden-Powell‘s movement clicked and he became his Dad’s personal superhero.
Charlie used a first aid kit to bandage his father. Then he claims to have ran a mile back to camp to retrieve sleeping bags and warm clothes to fight what he feared could be hypothermia from the blood loss.
He later fed and hydrated his Dad until the two returned to camp the next day — his father dragged himself back. But there was still nobody around to help, so Charlie did something you typically only hear about from feature films…he laced up and attempted a 13-mile hike the next day to save his Dad.
He ran into familiar church members partway through his journey. They went to David’s aid while Charlie kept going, hopeful he could give his father’s note to the right person.
“I cannot walk so I need a rescue, unfortunately,” the note read. “Please help Charlie find one for me.”
That person turned out to be an unidentified gentleman who volunteered to run a further eight miles to get help and eventually a helicopter arrived from Montana to airlift Charlie’s father to safety.
“He’s a tough kid,” David said over the phone, two surgeries later.
You got that right, Dad.
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