Rene Compean was no stranger to Angeles National Forest. But after venturing along a new path last April, the 45-year-old mechanic was lost.
As the day faded into dusk, following several hours of aimless roaming, his concern turned to fear. With no flashlight, only a liter of water and a power bar in his backpack, and less than ten percent battery remaining on his cell phone, Compean was unprepared for anything more than the two-hour trek he'd planned. Compean climbed to a spot, some 7,000 feet above sea level, where he found at least one bar of signal. "SOS. My phone is going to die. I'm lost."He texted a friend, attaching a photo showing where he was. All Compean could do then was wait and hope. But he wouldn't sleep. After spotting two mountain lions and a bear, he spent the night on high alert.
Sixty miles away in Ventura County, The sheriff's search-and-rescue teams had spent the previous night unsuccessfully looking for Compean, so they released the photo to the public, hoping someone might know the location.
Ben Kuo, then 47, has an unusual hobby to identify where movie scenes or television shows were filmed. When he saw the blurry image of Compean's legs surrounded by an endless landscape of rocks and vegetation, he instinctively pulled up a satellite map on his laptop. Then he narrowed his search to the surrounding area. The first thing he noticed in Compean's photo were patches of greenery. After comparing it to the satellite map, Kuo realized something: "He's got to be on the south side because there's not really any green valleys on the north side."
That finding tightened his search, leading him to an area that resembled the landscape in the image. The final step was cross-referencing the original photo with 3-D images of the area from Google Earth. The locations matched!
Soon, a search-and-rescue team helicopter was in the air, hovering above Compean. After spending 27hours alone in the wildness, Compean cried, "I'm safe." Compean's story probably would have ended very differently had a total stranger with strong satellite skills and a sharp eye for de tail not taken action.
