dRaven43

I don't even know how to begin describing what happened today. I have never been so scared in my entire life. Ever.

Andi and I set out today to go to a friend’s wedding. The wedding was beautiful and the reception was awesome, but the time was drawing near for Mallory to go to work and she was at home watching Cevin. So at 4pm I got in the van and headed home to pick Cevin up and bring him back to the reception. I remember it being a beautiful day and I was enjoying the drive with the windows down and Radiohead blaring just past the comfortable level for the shoddy factory speakers in the van. I believe I was also singing loudly and poorly for the majority of the trip back home.

Around 4:15 I pull into the drive way and see Mallory and Rob running around the front yard. I assumed that Cevin was asleep on the couch as that was around his normal nap time and Mallory and Rob were chasing each other for some reason that I would later find out was just hillarious. This was not the case.

When I opened the door to the van Mallory came running up and said that she couldn't find Cevin and that she'd looked everywhere. She said he was downstairs and she went upstairs to get her clothes for work quickly and when she came down he was gone. She was only upstairs five minutes she said, and I'm sure she's right. It doesn't take Cevin long to get into trouble.

I immediately thought that Cevin was upstairs playing with his cars in his closet or had fallen asleep in our bed or in some strange place. I ran through the house quickly yelling his name loudly, but just enough to wake him up or let him know that I was home and he could come running to me now. By the time I realized he wasn't anywhere in the house I had already lost all ability to reason and form complete thoughts. A thousand thoughts flew through my overloaded brain all at the same time, each one bringing me to a higher sense of panic.

I remembered a couple weekends ago when I was putting the trampoline together and Cevin was playing in the back yard, that he'd run off to a particular far corner of the yard to see the cows and was attempting to make it through the barbed-wire fence. I ran after him and caught him just after he'd managed his way under the fence and had assumed running position. Naturally, I took off running towards that corner of the yard immediately, expecting to see him laughing and petting the pinned bull our neighbors to the rear have there. When I didn't see him anywhere, I ran through the briars and over the barbed-wire fence and just kept going. I saw a tree with some rocks around it through yet another fence and headed in that direction. Crossing this fence proved to be more of a challenged when I realized there were more volts running through my body than I was comfortable with. I dropped to my stomach in the sludge of mud and whatever unthinkable things had made still dressed from the wedding in my slacks and dress shoes and new button up shirt. A couple quick rolls and I was at the rocks. When I looked between the circle of rocks and saw that it was in fact a cave entrance about 10-12 feet deep with water rushing at the pitch black bottom of it, my heart stopped. Completely.

I screamed Cevin's name and heard a deathly echo reverbing off the rock walls of the cave below, but no reply. With the angle and uncertain depth of the hole below, I knew that if I jumped down in there to look around it would take several people and a rope to get me out. I was on my back sliding under the electric fence and dialing 911 before I took another breath. In case he was in there, I was going to need help quickly. I remember talking to 911 while running in all directions around the back yard at once. I was on hold while I checked the shed he's always trying to get into, and by the time they got back to asking me questions I was waist deep in a sink hole filled with rocks and downed trees.

"I can't find my son. He's 4 years old and he has Down Syndrome and he doesn't understand not to leave the yard. He doesn't understand to come back home. I can't make him understand not to go to dangerous places. It will be dark soon...."

At this point the 911 operator was butting into my incessant incoherent babble asking questions like how long he'd been missing. I could hear the dismissal in his voice when I said "About 20 minutes." I re-interjected that he was completely helpless and our house is surrounded by dangerous wooded areas and water-filled sink holes and some big creek I've heard the neighbors talk about but had never seen. He began the "calm down, it hasn't been that long" dismissive speech because I'm sure by this point in most of these calls he gets he hears something like "Oh nevermind, he was in the dryer."

If you've never seen our house, we have a giant front yard and a small back yard. Our property is surrounded on two and a half sides by woods full of fallen trees, tall grass, gaint rocks, and dangerous sinkholes. Also, apparently cave entrances and a creek or river.

Thinking about little Cevin all alone in the big bad woods got the best of me and I started hyperventilating and ran inside. Still on the phone, I began heaving into the first toilet I could come to. I think this elevated the level of concern in the operator's voice and he immediately connected me to the state police station. I again began my explanation with the speed of an auctioneer and the clarity of a monkey with a mouth full of marbles. I couldn't make the words come out the way I intended between what were now dry heaves of panic and deep gasps for air.

I went back outside to the backyard and ran around to the front yard thinking I might find him in the boulders the previous house owners made into some sort of decoration. By the time I got to the front yard (still on the phone with 911), there was already a State Police officer pulling up the driveway. He jumped out of the car quickly walking towards me and demanded that we look through the inside of the house again. The 911 officer told me to focus on the search and that the police there would help. I hadn't even considered hanging up. I honestly didn't even remember I still had the phone up to my ear. As we looked in every nook and cranny in every room of our house, I heard his walkie talkie blaring calm voices of dispatch women issuing the missing persons report for my sweet innocent little boy.

"...blonde hair, blue eyes, child is a male caucasian with special needs...cannot understand verbal command..."

Hearing that monotone description through the tiny speaker reinforced the reality of the situation and tears poured from my eyes with the force of a terrential downpour. I then immediately ignored all the offers requests to stay calm and help him look inside and clamored down the stairs and out the front door. Still in my dress shoes, I took off running down the front yard when I was another State Police car pull up the drive way, followed immediately by another and another. One of the new officers went inside to help the first, and the other just joined me and started walking around the yard with me. By the time we realized that he wasn't playing in the boulders, there were two more State Police cars, five total. Each of them came to an abrupt stop and opened to reveal another concerned man in blue who took off walking in a different direction.

At this point, the whole ordeal seemed like an eerily coreographed nightmare of blue men fanning out in all directions. I figured they had the obvious places to look covered and headed through the back yard to the hole of doom. Standing over the hole helplessly, I heard what HAD to be Cevin's little voice off in the distance. But which direction? I knew it was West, but south-west or north-west?

I chose south-west and hurled myself in that direction, running past the bull and into the opposite side of the electric fence. This time it didn't even phase me, I just kept my hold on it and pushed it down and clamored ungracefully over. I don't know that I can still have children. At that particular moment I didn't care, I wanted the child we already had until recently.

The next time I took a breath I was standing on a hidden gravel road which has no obvious beginning or end leading to anywhere a car could get to. I thought maybe Cevin found that road and was running down it, so I did the same. About a quarter of a mile later, I yelled out "Cevin...where ahhhh yoooou?" in the exact same way that he would say it to me if I were hiding under the covers and he was at the foot of the bed with a silly grin on his face.

This vocalization was completely unfounded in any rational thought and caught me totally by surprise. I realized thirty minutes had passed since any other human had seen my beautiful little boy, and that the possibility of never hearing him say that to me again was growing with every passing second.

Again came uncontrollable lurching and heaving interrupted only by sobbing and quick insufficient gasps for air. When I finally looked around to see where I was I was in a clearing cut away for massive power line towers. Fresh green pretty grass that a pre-schooler would love to run in expanded in both directions as far as I could see. I first went left running much faster than my body was happy with, but not considering physical limits at all. By the time I finally gave out I could see blacktop, and realized that Cevin couldn't have gotten that far even running full speed and would have lost interest in any one direction as he often does.

I don't even remember running back to the bull pen or how I got through the tangled mass of barbed wire immediately behind me. I do remember clearing the electric fence with a quick bounce off of an old tree stump that Jackie Chan would have been proud of. Running past the bull I saw a police officer yelling at me to get out of that bull's space before he attacks me.

At this point I got a text message from Mallory "no response". And then immediately a call from Rob. I said a quick prayer to whatever would listen and answered, only to hear he was calling me to see if I'd found him. Disheartened, my body drove me forward back towards the house.

An unsuccessful roll under the electric fence gave me a horrible shock directly to my chest which was now covered in only a t-shirt. Apparently I'd unbuttoned my shirt while running in some sort of attempt to channel superman. This shock seemed particularly bad because I was laying in a thick puddle of thin mud and sludge. It didn't start my heart beating again though. That wouldn't happen for another hour.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, I'd called Andi and told her to grab the first person she saw and make them take her home and briefly explained what was happening. She was running towards me in the back yard, bounding through the thick grass and thorns in the field adjacent to our back yard. I gave her a hard hug and a quick cry and we headed off on different paths in the same direction. At some point we both turned around and went back to the house, I wasn't making good progress in my dress shoes and she was somehow doing all of this in pumps at first and then barefoot.

Standing in our back yard were people from search and rescue asking us questions about Cevin. What was his favorite toy, did he have a favorite teddy bear, what could they yell that he would be interested in? We didn't know. We couldn't come up with a coherent thought between the two of us. We mumbled something about him liking drums and jumping on the trampoline and then we were off to be intercepted by another line of questions.

We changed clothes at this point, and called more friends and family to help join the search. The yard and driveway were already full of Search and Rescue people and neighbors and a few friends, but we called and called anyway.

I remember time stopped then. It just stopped. No air was moving, no trees flowing, nothing breathed. I was standing shirtless in the closet looking for a bright colored shirt to put on. I found some bright orange Ekko shirt that I'm now sure belongs to Brandon Stapp, or at least did at some point. I was downstairs and walking out the front door before both arms found their respective holes. Apparently I'd slipped into some shoes as well.

Standing just feet from the front door were several more people asking questions. Andi collapsed to the ground and I joined her. There were then several cars up and down the driveway and the side of the road and people clammering about with dazed and concerned looks on their faces. There was a giant Search and Rescue truck and trailer in the neighbor's driveway printing out flyers and putting out bulletins. On these flyers was to be a picture of Cevin. Cevin James Prater, my perfect little boy who loves everyone. My perfect little boy sitting beside a big white number 2 because that's the first picture I could find in my wallet. My sweet little baby boy that loves Barney and The Incredibles and frozen fruit cups.

In my head, the next time I saw Cevin wouldn't be sitting behind his drums with a big smile on face looking for approval of his recent drumbeat. It would be staring back at me on a quickly printed black and white paper with MISSING across the top of it.

As cliché as it sounds, in my head I just kept thinking "you never think this kind of thing will happen to you." Well.. You don't. And it does.

I left Andi to answer questions about Cevin's favorites and physical characteristics and blood type and where they can get dental records. It had been over and hour now since he'd been gone. I headed over to the our neighbor's house across the street who is foreign and I couldn't make out hardly anything she was saying.

I remembered seeing little boys running down the road towards the cul-de-sac with fishing poles in their hands and panicked. As I turned to go find those little boys and make them show me where the fishing hole is, half expecting to find something horrible when I got there, I heard the boy that lives across the street (stangely, also with Down Syndrome) say "they find him".

I looked towards the cul-de-sac and I see all the neighbors heads start to turn in the same direction. Without another thought or breath I took off my shoes I'd slipped on earlier which had proven to be a poor choice for running. I don't know what happened between then and getting to the end of the road, I imagine I ran with wide eyes as fast as I could. Faster than I could, wider than I could.

I saw Tim Carver in the distance carrying what I knew was Cevin and walking towards a faded red gate leading to the road. Cevin was covered head to toe in mud and Carver was saying something through broken tears about finding him playing in a mud puddle. I ran up to the gate and thrust my arms out for my son and he gave him to me. It was not until that point when Cevin looked at me mid-hand-transfer and said "Daddy!" did I realize he was unharmed.

I completely lost it. I know. I'm a man and all that. But I'm telling you now, I dropped to my knees holding Cevin way harder than I should have been, and sobbed into his little shoulder like a little girl with a skinned knee. I couldn't catch my breath enough to say one word to him, I just held him and cried. Mud and all.

Soon Andi was on my back with her arms around both of us. An officer with a car in the cul-de-sac put the three of us in the back of his car and drove us back home. In the driveway, he let us out and put Cevin on the trunk of his car where he proceeded to tell us in sign language and broken toddler english that he saw a cat and chased it running fast like Dash (little boy with super speed from 'The Incredibles'). "Caaaat. (along with the sign for cat) Run run run (making running motions with his little arms). INCRED-BULL!" Everyone standing around laughed at his description of his adventure.

Only then, an hour and a half later, did my heart beat again.

As the sun began to set and thoughts of Cevin out in the woods alone in the dark were finally beginning to give way, I hugged everyone I could get my hands on. I think that was the happiest moment in my life. I inadequately thanked each person from the State Police and the Search and Rescue Squad and all of our family and friends that showed up (many from far away in WAAAY shorter time than it would normally take to make the drive).

Let me go on record saying this... I may have spoken poorly of the police and public service in general before, but those people were there within minutes. I was still on the phone with 911 when the first officer got there. Within 15 minutes 5 state police cars where in my driveway. Within 15 minutes of that, Search and Rescue had come in several cars and specialized trucks and had spread out searching for Cevin. The system worked EXACTLY as it should have. Sure, they weren't the ones to actually FIND Cevin, but I have no doubt that they would have. I can't thank them enough, and I'm SOO impressed at how organized, prompt, and helpful they were. Hats off to them.

It's 5am now, and I think I'm finally calm enough to get some sleep. I'm going to go crawl into my bed with my wife and my son. Things could have very easily gone another way and I'd never get the chance again to fall asleep with my arms around my son. If he'd actually fallen into the newfound cave opening... I can't even think about that.

I'm building a 50 foot brick wall around our yard and putting Cevin on a permanent leash. I don't blame Mallory. She's watched Cevin tons of times and has always done a great job with him. This particular time Cevin managed to get out of the house, but it's not Mallory's fault that Cevin doesn't understand to stay in the house unless an adult is with him. It's not her fault that he happened to get the door open this time and a cat caught his eye.

I'm writing this mostly for myself, but also so that I don't have to tell this story over and over. I prefer to move on enjoying and appreciating my life with Cevin. Also, the police said that they'd released the story to the press, so I imagine it will be in some paper or news show and I don't want those who see that to worry about him. He's fine now.

He's fine. I'm SO glad to be able to say that. This would be an entirely different update and I'd be an entirely different person if things had gone a little different.

Thank you to everyone to helped. You saved all our lives

Advertisement

Advertisement