Members of the public jumped into action last week when a 71-year-old resident of the Diamond Valley area was reported missing by police.
Allan Bowman was last heard from at about 11:20 p.m. on Jan. 4, when he called 911 to say he had fallen out of his truck and needed help.
Bowman was thought to be near Highway 22 and 466 Avenue West in Foothills County, but first responders could not locate him when they arrived.
Searches of the area failed to turn up anything, and Turner Valley RCMP turned to the public on Jan. 5 for help locating the missing person. Searchers included RCMP, fire services and a Calgary Police Service helicopter.
Mike Luchia, a Diamond Valley resident and dispatcher at Foothills Regional Emergency Services, located Bowman on Jan. 6 about 800 metres west of Highway 22 near 498 Avenue West, in the Hartell area.
Lucia said he’s known Bowman for over 40 years and they’d worked together in the past.
“It's been a long time that I've known him,” Luchia said.
When he first heard Bowman was missing, he thought he had gone off somewhere without telling anyone, but as time went on he decided to join the search.
“My daughter and granddaughter were out the night before looking for him,” Luchia said.
He said Bowman is well-liked and well-known in the area.
“Everybody was praying that he was going to be OK,” he said. “There were many, many people out searching. You don't normally see that many vehicles on the back roads.”
Luchia knew the general area Bowman was thought to be in and had a hunch that he was somewhere that would be hard to spot.
When Luchia came across tire tracks going towards a ravine, he decided to look but said he didn't see anything at first.
“I decided to hop over the fence, to look down into the ravine, and there was this truck,” he said.
He said Bowman’s hands and legs were very cold and he wasn’t coherent. Luchia said he rendered what assistance he could before emergency crews arrived.
Given the extensive search, Luchia said he didn’t expect to find anything.
“I was quite shocked,” he said. “I figured that if there was anything down there that they probably would have found it.”
Bowman was airlifted to hospital by STARS in serious condition, said Diamond Valley Fire Rescue Chief TJ Moore, adding the location he was found in would have been very tough to spot from air or ground searches.
