Kevin Bardsley: Facing Adversity, Helping Others

Garrett Died in the Uinta Mountains after he took a wrong turn on a hike. Eleven days of searching by his father, teams of volunteers, and other authorities came up empty.

The love and support from the community stuck with Bardsley, inspiring him to start the Garrett Bardsley Foundation, which coordinates search efforts for other missing Utahans.

When Bardsely got the news that another scout, Brennan Hawkins had disappeared, he brushed back memories of his own tragedy and went on the mountain to find Brennan.

Using horses, ATVs, and GPS units,search parties were assembled. Using the experience he gathered from the search for his own son, Bardsley worked diligently to find Brennan. It was his knowledge of the failed search for his own son that eventually led the rescuers to find Brennan, scratched and sunburned...but alive.

This is how Kevin Bardsley is paying it forward. In 2004 his son Garrett disappeared. The 12-year-old boy, who would now be 15, has never been found.

Kevin Bardsley said, "Garrett will always be in my heart, always be a part of me."

"There was no way in a million years I could thank everyone. And to me, this gives me an opportunity to pay it back again," Bardsley said.

Garret's legacy also lives on in a small village in Ecuador where expedition leader, Kevin Bardsely and others participate in service expeditions under the direction of ASCEND, A Humanitarian Alliance, teamed up with staff and volunteers. Young students in Puca Cruz call their school built by these volunteers, Garret's School.

The children of Puca Cruz knew Garret. He had participated with his family in an expedition to Ecuador in 2003. Plans had been made for the Bardsley family to return the following year to continue working on the Puca Cruz School.

It was August of 2004 when Garrett Bardsley disappeared into the Uinta Mountains. Kevin Bardsley describes to Nancy Grace on CNN the events that led up to his disappearance:

"Garrett and I went out fishing early in the morning. I wanted to -- wanted to get out early, and there was frost on the ground. We went out and got to the lake and started to get ready to fish. As I was setting up his pole for him, he slipped his feet into the water and got his feet wet, and I said, "Well, should we go back and change?"

He says, "No, I want to fish." He really wanted to fish bad. So we fished tore for a little while, and laughed and everything, and then he said, you know, "We`re not catching anything. I`m going to go back and get some dry shoes on and eat breakfast."

And I said, "OK, do want me to go with you?"

And he said, "No. I can do it." You know, Garrett was 12 years old, you know. This is when they want to feel their independence. And so I didn`t push him about going with him, and so I said, "OK."

And I -- I knew where the camp was, and we had been there a few times. And so I watched him go around the lake, and as he went around the lake he passed the path going up. And so I called to him and I said, "Garrett, you`ve missed the path. Turn right there and go straight up in."

And so he turned, and I watched him go up into the trees -- and that was the last I had seen him.

I went back about 15, 20 minutes after that, and went to the camp fire, and -- and thought I saw him initially, because they`re all boys, and it was cold, and they had hoods on. And so I thought that was him, and I went and grabbed my food, stood over by the camp fire, looked, and horror filled my body, because it wasn`t Garrett.

And so I initially ran to the lake, and when I ran to the lake I screamed and called for him and listened. I heard nothing. And I ran back up and told the other leaders that were there, and we immediately began to search for Garrett. And that`s where we are."

Although Kevin Bardsley lost his son to such a tragedy, he faced adversity to overcome his own loss and turned to help others. When Brendan Hawkins went missing in a similar situation, Bardsley was one of the first people out on the search. They found Brendan a few days later.

Last year, Bardsley was the subject of a Reader's Digest article about his efforts to find other lost children, titled "Buddy System". This year he was named the 2007 Hero of the Year based on a readers' poll. To finalize the honor, senior editors and executives from Reader's Digest, along with Sen. Orin Hatch, R-Utah, presented Kevin Bardsley with a plaque Wednesday during a quick trip to the U.S. Capitol in Washington. "It was short but sweet," Bardsley said about the 20-minute meeting with Hatch. "We were very honored that he took the time for our family." Hatch also described the meeting as an honor. "Kevin truly is a hero: someone who turns death into a fighting chance to live," Hatch said. "Because of Kevin's determination, Brennan Hawkins is still with us, and I'm sure many others will benefit from Kevin's service in the future." However, Bardsley emphasized that this award should really be shared with the hundreds of other people who helped search for his son. Bardsley also praised people who continue to make a difference by searching for other lost children, including Hawkins, who got lost in the same mountains in 2005 as Garrett Bardsley did. Hawkins was found safe four days after he disappeared.

The clouds have come, as they often will in the evenings here, to hold the mountain village of Puca Cruz in their wet caress. From the hilltop where Kevin Bardsley has stopped to rest, the children dancing in the village square are but silhouettes in the haze. The dance below comes at the end of a daylong Christmas celebration known as "La Fiesta de los Ninos." Culturally curious by nature, Bardsley would normally be among the group of broadly smiling Americans, laughing and snapping photos of the tiny performers. But on this night, he is slouched in a plastic chair, perched on the edge of a muddy concrete pad that serves as the village's soccer field. A single light bulb strung from the rafters of the village schoolhouse projects a dim glow upon the tired man. It might be a sad scene were it not for one thing: Bardsley is smiling. It has been four months since 12-year-old Garrett Bardsley wandered away from his father during a Boy Scout camping trip in Utah's Uinta Mountains. It is widely accepted that Garrett is dead, his remains still hidden in that rugged range, buried now under yards of snow.

"The hardest thing for me through this entire experience was when the snow hit," Bardsley says. "When it did, I couldn't just accept it. I had to go up there and see it and touch it and to see how deep it was." For a man stricken by grief and guilt - a man who says he often must pray for the strength to accept what he cannot control - it was a devastating blow. To be certain, this small and impoverished village, high in the Andes, was an unlikely choice for Bardsley to come to look for his son. But at this moment, as he sits 3,600 miles and two worlds away from the rugged spot where he last saw Garrett, Bardsley has come to an empowering realization: He is closer than ever to finding the boy he lost.

"He wanted to be here": Villagers recognized their needs were vast, but when visited by representatives of the Salt Lake City-based Engage Now Foundation [now ASCEND] this past fall, the locals pointed to a small structure at the top of the village as their primary concern. The simple one-room schoolhouse was far too small to accommodate every student. Those who couldn't fit into the classroom had to walk two hours to the next nearest school, "or they just didn't go," says foundation CEO Carolyn Dailey. To manage the issue, villagers had constructed a second classroom of scrap wood and cardboard.

The foundation began laying plans for a Christmastime mission to Puca Cruz, were it would launch a long-term project intended ultimately to help scores of such villages. A contractor by trade - and leader by disposition - Kevin Bardsley was pegged to lead the mission's construction team. The project would begin with Americans helping the villagers build new latrines and evaluating ways to bring clean water into the village. It would be the Bardsley family's second expedition with Engage Now. "No one was more excited about it than Garrett," Kevin Bardsley says. "He wanted to be here so much."

"We all knew it was what Garrett would have wanted," she says. Since snowfall halted the search - and having accepted even earlier that his son was no longer alive - Kevin Bardsley had been contemplating what kind of legacy his boy would leave behind. What he learned is that legacies are not chosen, they are assigned.

Money donated to the Garrett Bardsley Foundation after the boy's disappearance exceeded the family's costs. And a $17,000 donation from Spanish Fork Middle School left the foundation awash in resources. The money could buy a few days of search time in the Uintas, but in the Andes it could change a village's world. The school could be built. "We are going to finish this": Armed with the Bardsley Foundation's funds, Engage Now coordinated with Ecuadorean contractors to begin work on the school.

By noon on Tuesday, when the Bardsley family stepped tentatively off a chartered bus onto a muddy plateau that serves as the village square, Garrett's memorial was nearly complete. About 50 Engage Now volunteers - including the Bardsley family and more than a dozen close friends and extended family members - will depart Puca Cruz today after the dedication of two new schoolrooms, including a library stocked with text books donated by the family and the local LDS mission. Engage Now missions are not designed to be simple, nor is the work intended to be completed solely by the visiting Americans. "This is not our project," Engage Now's Dailey says. "This is their project, and we are here to help them accomplish it."

Kevin Bardsley, too, stood back to admire the process unfolding near his son's memorial. "Oh my gosh," he says. "My gosh, we are going to finish this."

On the other side of the soccer field, Courtney Bardsley looked up at her father and sighed. "He's doing so well," the 19-year-old Brigham Young University student says of her father. "He's come to the realization that he just has to accept what has happened, but that doesn't mean just sitting around. Not being able to go to the Uintas right now, this gives him something to do for Garrett."

"A pretty good legacy": The clouds have come, as they often will this time of night, and Kevin Bardsley's eyes follow the shapes of the children dancing in the village square. He peers over his shoulder at the school that soon will bear his son's name as the "Puca Cruz Escuela en Memoria de Garrett Bardsley." "We can do this again," he says. "We can do this again many times." The family hopes to return to these cloud-covered mountains in July to celebrate Garrett's life by improving the lives of others. There is a school just up the road, in the small village of San Vincente, where children attend classes in a wood-frame room with plastic walls and a mud floor. There is also interest in building a school for children over the age of 12, who currently have no local school. "Garrett was a giving young man, and if there were anything he could do for someone else, he would," the grieving father says, tears running down his face. "We will never go back. Our lives have changed. And it is so much for the better.

"For a 12 year-old boy, this is a pretty good legacy."