Twelve-year-old Micah Thomas, of Dresden, was found cold, but safe around 2 p.m on Thurs., March 15 after a day long search for him along the Eastern River.
After a long restless night by both the boy, and his parents Laura and Peter, Micah was found in remarkably good health, by Tim Nason, a Dresden concerned citizen, who instinctively decided to walk the shore and search for the boy.
At a press conference at the Dresden Fire Station, Lt. Kevin Adam of the Maine Warden Service, was about to announce there was no new news on the missing boy, when Lincoln County Sheriff Office Lt. Rand Maker whispered into his ear that the boy had been found, to the relief of family and friends.
Thomas disappeared after being dropped off by the school bus at the intersection of 52 Eagle Lodge Lane and Rt. 127 in Dresden around 3 p.m. on March 14. He is a 7th grade student at Hall-Dale Middle School.
“Basically he was upset and took off,” Maine Warden Service Maj. Greg Sanborn said.
When Micah did not arrive home as usual, his stepfather Peter Thomas reported him missing to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office at 3:40 p.m. The Maine State Warden was called in around 5:50 p.m. and began a ground search, and K-9 teams were deployed.
A team of about 50 emergency responders was quickly organized and began a grid search for the boy on the east side of the Eastern River. Searchers were equipped with global positioning systems to track the area that they searched. Their routes were put on a grid map to ensure the area was fully covered.
When Nason, a member of the Dresden Conservation Commission, a graphic designer for The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners, and the owner of a 95 acre farm off Alexander Road on the West side of the Eastern River, read newspaper accounts of the missing boy, the 60-year-old man wanted to help.
Nason went to the Dresden Fire Dept. and volunteered to join the search party. He was told if they needed his help, they would call him. Nason returned home and on a whim decided he would walk the western shore of the Eastern River.
“The search was concentrated on the East Pittston Road on the eastern side of the river. “I thought he might be by the river. He was a 12-year-old boy, and boys are attracted to the river,” the author of the novel Days with Cedar Whitewater commented.
Nason published the novel, about a boy who runs away and hides by a river, in 1997.
On instinct, Nason started walking along the ice berm from the southern end “with the river on my right and the marsh on my left. All I did was to walk down there to see what I could see.
“I continued up the berm, which was four to six feet high and narrow. I was walking through bushes and trees when I heard a voice calling somewhere ‘I’m over here.’ When I found him he was sitting in the middle of the marsh in a big open space. Fortunately it was warm and dry where he was sitting on a clump of humus and grass.
“He had bare feet that were propped up on his wet boots. He was wearing a dark blue sweatshirt and blue jeans. I asked him if he was who I was looking for and he said he was. He was very alert. I did not believe my eyes.
“He was lost. He did not know how to get home. He had crossed the river. He walked up East Pittston Road, walked down a woods road and got in a boat and crossed the river to the west side. It sounded to me like he crossed in the evening. I don’t know what happened to him after that. My understanding is he spent the night in the marsh where I found him. It was quite cold that night. It snowed. He stepped in the river and water went over his boots, that’s how he got his feet wet.
“I felt his legs and arms and they felt quite warm. His feet were very swollen and blue. He was very alert. He answered all my questions quickly and accurately. He was very happy to see me.”
“He (Micah Thomas) said he saw me before I saw him. I gave him my jacket and put my socks on his feet. He said his feet were numb, and he could not stand or walk.”
Nason did not have a cell phone with him, so was unable to notify anyone that he had found the boy. The spot where he located Thomas was “extremely isolated and inaccessible.”
Nason and Thomas watched a Warden float plane continually circle overhead. Nason waived his blaze orange vest and both yelled, but the plane did not spot them. After the plane passed by a half dozen times, Nason decided to move the boy. He had the boy hold his shoulders and he carried him to the river’s edge.
“At that very moment a Marine Patrol boat went by. We yelled and finally got them to notice us,” Nason commented. The Marine Patrol boat beached on the mud. Warden Christopher Hilton walked through the mud, picked Thomas up off the berm and carried him on his back to the boat and transported him to the boat landing on Rt. 197 where he was treated by medical personnel and transported to Mid-Coast Hospital in Brunswick where he was treated for early onset frostbite and dehydration.
“Peter Thomas stopped by the house and we talked. We all felt fortunate that Micah was safe,” Nason said. “For me I’m very grateful to have found him and participate in this miracle. It was pure luck I found him.”
“The Thomas family has expressed their gratefulness to all those who responded to help find Micah. Emergency responders in this incident included the Maine Warden Service, Maine Marine Patrol, Maine State Police-Computer Crime Division, Maine Search and Rescue Association, Maine Forest Service, Lincoln County Emergency Management Office, Dresden Fire, and multiple are fire departments,” a Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife said in a press release.
The Maine Warden Service did not return multiple phone messages for this article.
