When Fear Becomes a Kidnapper

Our plans for the June weekend were simple: camp on Friday and Saturday night in a pretty little mountain campground and drive our youth group down to San Juan Capistrano on Sunday for a beach outing.

Saturday evening, a group of motorcyclists roared into the campground. Shouting that there were children asleep, the camp manager ordered them to get out. They left as noisily as they had come in. I drifted back to sleep.

Bam! Bam! Gunshots jolted me awake! “It won’t work to shoot ’em in the head,” a man’s voice said. “When they do the autopsy, it will show they were shot with a 410.” “Get the rope and turn the lights on this bunch of
trees and start here! If you find any little ones, just hang ’em in their bags!”

Frantically tearing the back screen from our tent and awaking my twelve-year-old daughter, we began a terrifying two-week flight for help and survival! This is our true story.