Survivor Story

Aron Ralston News Interview Leads to Rescue…Personal Locator Beacon helps save a disabled motorist in 90 minutes in  Washington County Utah backcountry.

In a rapid, precise rescue, a satellite-detectable emergency Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) alerted authorities to the desperate plight of an elderly man stuck in snowy, rugged terrain.

Novice off-road driver, Ken Cohen, 65, readily admits that overconfidence and inexperience factored into his recent desperate situation in the high, snowy wilderness of southern Utah. When he set out in his Jeep on December 30^th to explore promising ATV trails, he brought a sandwich, carrots and raisins, a cell phone and, fortunately, a recently purchased PLB.

When his vehicle spun into a ditch at a 5,866-foot elevation, Cohen quickly realized that he was in a circumstance well beyond his expertise. He had no cell phone coverage and a spinal condition hindered him from hiking out. Having no water, blanket or other means of self-rescue, he activated his ACR Electronics’ TerraFixä 406 GPS PLB at 12:30 p.m., and prayed that help would arrive.

“The fact is that I’m a novice off-roader. I know my own limitations. I knew I couldn’t have walked out of there. I was 20 miles from the nearest city. I knew the degrees were going to be in the teens and twenties that night,” Cohen said.

Within 15 minutes, Cohen said his wife, Rita, received a phone call from the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (AFRCC) and she confirmed that her husband was driving on Veyo Shoals Creek Road. The AFRCC then notified the Washington County Sheriff’s Office of Cohen’s location and a deputy was dispatched to Cohen’s GPS coordinates. The officer found Cohen, pulled his vehicle back onto the road and drove it down for him. The entire rescue took one-and-a-half hours.

This was the first PLB rescue for the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, according to Chief Deputy Robert Tersigni. “The GPS location (from the beacon) took us right to him. It worked out good,” Tersigni said.

Cohen is a retired physician who relocated from New Orleans to St. George, Utah after Hurricane Katrina. He purchased his ACR PLB in the fall of 2006 when his wife learned about beacons on a TV news interview with outdoorsman Aron Ralston last summer. “As soon as I heard about PLBs, I knew I needed one,” Cohen said. “It’s my inseparable companion.” After hearing about the rescue, Aron responded: “I'm really blessed to know that my life's experiences exposed Dr. Cohen to the TerraFix™ and played a role in helping him out of an emergency situation.”

Cohen calls his experience a humility lesson. “I’ll tell anybody: I don’t care how experienced, how young or how well equipped you are, you must be nuts to go out without a PLB. I was so astonished. It was remarkable how it all worked out.”