Sending Out an S.O.S.

I tell my sons that despite all the evidence to the contrary, humans have the ability to be kind.

The story takes place when I was in college and on a summer trip to Alaska. One day, my sister and I rented a kayak together. We went into the water of Glacier Bay National park.

It was beautiful. There is only a seal poking its nose out of the water and a mountain and pine trees behind it.

After half an hour, we turned the kayak around and headed back, but we weren't aware of the change in the tide. The channel we had traveled through had vanished. We were confused in the bay. We made a left turn and were too scared to approach the land. The theme of the song was Gilligan's Island.

We were no longer pretending to be silly as the hours went by. The only sounds we heard were the splashes of our paddles and the howls from the land.

It started to get cold. The rain began to affect our shirts. We had to get some water. There was a fall of night. There was no one on the water after eight hours. We discussed what our obituaries would say.

Our parents were hysterical back on land. It didn't help that a park Ranger told them it was likely that we had drowned.

My sister and I heard voices around 1 a.m. We yelled for help and steered the kayak. A group of five men were camping on one of the islands and drinking.

When we got to the shore, one of them asked if we had any tobacco products.

The men didn't say anything. We were given a tent, water and dry clothes. They went several hundred yards to get the food they had stored and strung from a tree to keep bears away even though it was the middle of the night.

We put rocks on the beach in the morning to spell out the name of the game. My parents finally spotted us after renting a plane for $360 My dad asked if we got a good night's sleep. He and my mom were terrified. He talked to a therapist for the first time after that night.

That's it.

My son Lucas asked if I was so grateful to those guys that I should go find them and thank them.

It's a good question. I posted an account on Facebook explaining that I was hoping to find our Saviors. Many people provided leads to friends of friends who worked in Alaska in the 1980s. A few people called me to ask questions and spent hours on the internet.

My sister said she couldn't believe how nice these people are. I think it reminds me of the campers.

There is a chance that the park still has a case incident report according to one sleuth. I received a document in my inbox.

The experience of reading the report was strange because of the difference between the just-the-facts-ma'am tone and the fear my parents must have felt.

Arnold Jacobs told the Ranger Contact Station that his son and daughter had not come back. Darkness stopped the rangers from searching by boat. They resumed in the morning but the fog made it hard to see.

A group of people in a kayak were camping on the northern tip of Kidney Island when they heard their pleas for help.

Wait until you're sure. This was large. The name of the man is Doug.

I reached out to every Doug Rand and asked if they had saved two kids from the cold.

I used a lot of different methods to find Doug Rands. All over the country, my spreadsheet grew to over 80 Dougs.

The book "Let's Go Alaska" was written by Doug Rand. It had to be him. He apologized after I sent him a note, but he wanted to stay in touch.

Maybe it was the Doug Rand who wrote the play. It wasn't really.

In a Santa Cruz newspaper, I found an obituary of an activist who had protested against beauty pageants and had worked with Cesar Chavez. His widow was willing to work with me. She said it sounded like him when he talked about a rescue in Alaska. She said he was a generous man who wore a button with a drawing of a bee on it.

He was going to get his datebooks back from storage. She called soon after. I'm sorry. He wasn't the one who it was.

The experience of connecting with this cross-section of America, the Doug Rands and the enthusiastic sleuths has been wonderful.

My discoveries have provided my parents with a bit of closure since they couldn't read the report. One of the volunteers knew a woman who ran a kayak company in the 80s. She was nice and contrite when I talked to her.

She said that it was irresponsible of them.

She said that the company changed its policy after our incident, and is now more cautious about renting kayaks to inexperienced young people.

I told my parents that I might have saved someone's life.

My father said it was something.

I have found out how lucky we were. The woman at the kayak company told me that my sister and I had been helped by a number of small miracles. We were lucky that we didn't make a wrong turn that would have sent us into a whirlpool filled strait and dumped us into the water. We were lucky that the five men decided to camp on the island and were awake at 1 a.m.

I am still trying to locate Doug and his friends. I have to give them a drink.

The column explores a moment in a writer's life. A.J. Jacobs is the author of a number of books.