Sunday, May 12, 2024, at 6:01 p.m. (CT), we received a request for help with an offroad recovery in Arkansas. The requester, Brandon Eidson, submitted the following information: “We have a family who needs somebody with a winch or kinetic rope. Their winch broke and they have a 2 year old with them. They are High centered in mudhole and no traction / I’m with the vehicle.”
We verified the contact information, location, and situation with Brandon before sending the request to local volunteers within a 60-mile radius. We also had to create the request manually since the requester didn’t have any cell service.
Within 40 minutes, we got quite a few volunteers offering help. But from them, all, Mark Bowie marked himself as engaged and asked a couple of his buddies to assist since he has a local recovery group, and they were around 25 miles from the incident.
The vehicle stuck was a Lexus GX470, and by chance, the two volunteers sent by Mark were driving two GX470 as well. One of the volunteers Mark sent was Luke Mercado. The volunteers ran into some issues trying to find the requester’s trail.
The volunteers were suppose to be arriving at the requester’s location around 11:30 p.m., but they had to go back and forth, plus lack of communications with the requester made it tough to coordinate. They arrived around 1:30 a.m. and got them free around 2:30 a.m. They were all out by 3:00 a.m.
We want to thank Mark for branching out to his friends to help with this request. We also want to thank Luke and the other volunteer who actually worked until very late and never gave up, until they got Brandon out. Your guys are awesome. We are sending the free decal to Mark and Luke. (offroad recovery in Arkansas)
We need more volunteers in this area! If you would like to receive a text message when we get a request near you, create your account here: https://offroadportal.org/signup
