Cd'A couple saves man

COEUR d'ALENE - It was a Sunday drive that saved a life.

But when couple Penny McCown and Scott Kalis jumped in their 1997 GMC Sonoma truck and drove away from their Coeur d'Alene home Sunday afternoon, they had no idea about the rescue part.

"We still have a hard time comprehending it," Kalis said of the trip that came across 67-year-old Louis Rogers, stuck in his car for four days on a remote mountain road in Montana.

"It's just something we do all the time, McCown said.

Nice days, bad days, in any kind of weather the couple likes to take in the views from the cab of their rig along the St. Joe River, across North Idaho or into Montana.

"We have a hard time sitting idle," Kalis said.

The truck, with its 140,000 miles and its brand-new engine, has the wear and tear to prove it.

But something else must have been at play Sunday.

Of all the routes the couple could have taken, they headed straight for Montana, past the town of St. Regis, and nine miles up the unmaintained Gold Creek Road, a road so covered in ice and snow the couple says now they had no business going up as far as they did.

But they did, and found Rogers writing out his goodbye letter inside his stuck Cadillac, certain that he going to die.

"Any given day, we would have turned around miles ago," Kalis said Tuesday. "Why we kept going we don't know, we really don't know, because we wouldn't normally do that."

Rogers said it was because he was praying for them.

That's why Kalis kept pushing his truck up the hill.

"All the sudden I see something out of the corner of my eye and I see these people coming," Rogers said, as he was signing his letter.

McCown got out of the truck and saw Rogers, starving and dehydrated.

"What are you doing up here?" she asked him.

"Dying," he said, showing her the letter. "And here's the proof."

Around 200 people had been searching for Rogers since the weekend, after the Lakeside, Mont., musician had left the Flathead on Thursday for a trip to Calder where he was going to perform for some friends.

But after reaching the St. Regis area, Rogers thought he would try an alternative route on Gold Creek Road, where conditions started to deteriorate, and when he tried to turn around, he got stuck.

Walking out was not an option because of health problems, including diabetes and heart complications, so Rogers hunkered in his car, without cell phone reception, and waited.

He watched aircrafts fly by, signaling at them with his headlights. He didn't have food, but packed snow in a tin can and drank it when it melted.

At night, bundled up in all the stage clothes he had brought with him, he would run the heater for a few minutes at a time to stay warm.

He said he had never seen so many beautiful stars at night, but alone for so long, his mind would race, and he reflected on all the highs and lows of his 67 years.

"You get to thinking," he said. "You think of the mistakes you made when you were younger, man, the things you shouldn't have done, but you did."

His only company was a lone wolf on the second day, who jogged to his car a few yards at a time, stopped and watched him, before running off into the woods.

"I thought, 'Boy, if I could run like that I'd be out of here in five seconds flat,'" he said.

After McCown and Kalis got over their shock and packed Rogers and his band equipment in their truck, Rogers told them they were the answer to his prayers.

"You're here because I was praying for you," he told them.

"God must have sent us," McCown said. "If we would have turned around where we really wanted to turn around we would have missed the car."

Back at St. Regis, the three ran into a friend of Rogers, who was setting out to go look for his lost friend. Instead, he bought Rogers a V-8 drink and a tuna sandwich.

"There isn't words for them people," Rogers said of the Coeur d'Alene couple. "They saved my life.

"Tell them I love them," he said.

But the musician, who has played guitar for country music legends Merle Haggard and George Jones, offered to repay McCown and Kalis by playing at the couple's wedding planned later this year.

Rogers is recovering at home, and said he feels great.

And after the rescue, McCown and Kalis continued their Sunday cruise, driving north before cutting over to Sandpoint and back home - a 336 mile round trip.

"It's something we love to do," Kalis said. "We do it in bad weather too."