Bodine said knowing that her family would be worried, and the need to get back to them, is what motivated her.
“That drove us not to panic, and we had this concept that we were going to do whatever we had to do,” she said.
A scenic detour gone wrong
After vacationing at the Riverbend Hot Springs, Bodine and Shoe checked out of their hotel room in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, on Tuesday, March 28, setting off on what was supposed to be a six-hour drive through rural New Mexico, west to Phoenix, where they planned to catch a Wednesday flight home to Brookville.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
What they’d hoped would be a scenic detour on the last leg of their trip turned out to be a life-altering experience that left them stranded in a huge wilderness with limited resources.
Robyn Bodine isn’t sure how long she and Shoe were driving before realizing she’d lost cellphone service, but she’d noticed the roads had gotten hazardous.
“The roads were pretty crazy and not very safe, so it was a very slow process to get through some areas,” she said. “I went to check Facebook, and I realized I didn’t have service, so I said, ‘Wait a second. Tracie, we lost GPS.’ ”
As the two continued driving, Bodine noticed the road, which was not paved, had started to become softer as the afternoon sun became warmer. The pair managed to free the vehicle once when it became stuck in the mud, but were unable to do so a second time.
“We were just down in a mud pit, basically,” Bodine said, adding that she and Shoe immediately began planning the best course of action, walking miles down the road in both directions in search of cell service.
“The first day, we walked about 17 miles,” she said, adding that they walked until they lost daylight. “There were some animal sounds, like growling, so we decided then to turn around.”
At this point, the hike back to the car was around eight miles.
“We had about two miles left when I misjudged what I thought was a mud puddle, which was actually more like a mud pit” in which she lost her shoes, Bodine said. “I had to walk the rest of the way barefoot, which did a lot of damage and hindered me a lot more.”
The women eventually reached the car and decided to stay put for the night.
“I was fearful, but what bothered me the most was that I knew at that point my kids and my husband would be starting to worry,” she said. “We talk multiple times a day and almost always say goodnight if we’re not all in the same house together.”
With little to drink, the two set off the next morning in search of a water source. The women eventually came upon an abandoned hunting cabin, where they found matches, wood, and a creek. They boiled water to drink and hunkered down for another night in the wilderness before making the trek back to the car in the morning.
“We were at the point where we thought we should keep our cell phones charged, and we had at least a little bit of water to keep us alive long enough for somebody to find us,” she said.
Police agencies work quickly
When the women’s six-hour drive turned into nearly a day of no response to calls and texts, Bodine’s husband Troy, a retired Montgomery County Sheriff’s deputy, said the family knew something was wrong and got police involved.
Troy Bodine filed a missing persons report on Wednesday with the Brookville Police Department. A chain of events was set in motion that allowed the Brookville PD, Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, and the FBI to team together in the search. By Wednesday evening, Troy was boarding a flight to New Mexico.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
And at the time, law enforcement officials didn’t know whether the women were lost, or if this was an abduction. Brookville Police Chief Doug Jerome, with assistance from the Sheriff’s Office, said he was calling the women’s hotel seeking security camera video, calling New Mexico police agencies for information and checking bank transactions that might reveal where the women had been.
Montgomery County Sheriff Rob Streck said he connected Brookville Police with local FBI officials, who, after vetting the case, got court orders for cellphone tower data — pings that would show where the women were before they entered an area with no service, according to Richard Ruggieri, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Cincinnati Field Office.
Jerome said he took that data, did some digging on Google Maps, and called New Mexico law enforcement with an educated idea of where they should look. Hours later, on a remote two-lane road in the Gila National Forest, Bodine and Shoe were found — tired and dehydrated, but alive.
“I wasn’t coming home until they were found,” Troy said. “My gratitude, and our gratitude, goes out to (law enforcement). Without their information and their help, we would still be looking through 3 million acres (of national forest) for them.”
Ruggieri, who said he worked in multiple other states earlier in his career, agreed that separate agencies don’t always collaborate so well.
“The Dayton area is not the norm, to be honest,” Ruggieri said. “The (local agencies) work seamlessly together, and that’s not the case everywhere.”
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Though Bodine has a personal connection to law enforcement, Streck and Ruggieri said the response to a call for a missing person starts the same in any case. Streck said in this case, it quickly became obvious something was seriously wrong, and Ruggieri said “the stars aligned” as the investigative steps kept bearing fruit, which isn’t always the case.
“The FBI, state and local (agencies) approach these things the same way, every single time. The standard is the same, the expectations are the same, and that’s the way we conduct ourselves,” Ruggieri said, adding that some cases can take longer due factors like lack of information or clues to follow.
Ruggieri added that Bodine and Shoe employed survival skills that also allowed them to stay safe until they were located.
“They had the wherewithal to understand the situation and to not freak out,” he said, highlighting the importance of expecting the unexpected. “We’re the law enforcement, so we have a plan for everything. I would offer to the community to do the same thing: Have a plan.”
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