Document text
Ashland, Oregon HOME Valley & State Sports Opinion/Editorial Classifieds Business Columnists Obituaries Weather Archive Revels Etcetera Backpage O-Zone Real Estate Guide Menu Guide Shakespeare Subscribe Contact Us Rate Card Place an Ad April 18, 2006 Stivers happy to settle into a routine As story about a lost RV fades, parents hope their kids will get a fresh start By Alan Panebaker Ashland Daily Tidings Peter Stivers is back working at the 7-Eleven on Siskiyou Boulevard. Stivers and his family were stuck in the woods for two weeks, then stuck in the spotlight because of legal problems relatives brought from Arizona. Photos by Orville Hector | Ashland Daily Tidings Walking into the local 7-Eleven to see a local legend, life seems to be trudging along at a normal pace for Peter Stivers after a nearly monthlong ordeal that brought fame, near fortune and sadness to his family. “It’s embarrassing for me,” Stivers said of the national media attention he and his family received after being caught in a motorhome in the wilderness outside Grants Pass for 17 days. “I’m just wanting to get things back to normal.” When Peter’s stepfather and mother showed up in Ashland at the beginning of March, he had no idea of the adventure he was in for. After a rollercoaster ride of getting stuck in the snow in the 35-foot motorhome, more than two weeks of being stranded and a manic frenzy of positive and negative press about his family, Stivers is breathing a giant sigh of relief. Elbert Higginbotham and Stivers’ mother, Becky, are in jail in Washington awaiting a transport from Arizona to bring them back to face drug and weapons charges. The Stivers family, however, is slowly slipping back into their normal Ashland life. “I’m just worried about my kids,” Stivers said. “It’s all going to come back on them.” After a heroic survival story was tainted by grandparents on the run, the ideas of book and movie deals for the Stivers slowly fell into the background, and the struggle became a matter of burying skeletons that the young family did not know even existed. The motorhome driven by the Higginbothams is parked outside of the Stivers' home, but the Higginbothams are on their way back to Arizona to face drug charges. The Stivers children are back at school at Walker Elementary, and Marlo Hill-Stivers has returned to work at DJ’s Video. Stivers said his mother is still irate about the way the press and police made her family out, but Peter is extending the olive branch to the Daily Tidings and thanking the community for its love and support. “I would like to say thank you for everyone hoping and praying we were OK,” Stivers said. Stivers’ parents’ motorhome is still parked on B Street, and they have no way of getting it back to Arizona at the moment, but that is the least of his worries. He just wants his kids to not be teased at school about their grandparents’ problems. As for Ashland Police Department detective Brent Jensen — who was the lead officer on the case — he is glad to finally get back to his regular duties. “Your normal workload doesn’t stop because you have a high-profile case,” Jensen said. “It presorts all your priorities. Everything gets pushed back.” Jensen said his recognition by national media and dealing with such a big case taught him a few things — mainly that he needed to set up a specific phone hotline for people calling in with tips about the missing family. During the crux of the search for the family, Jensen would come in to work and find 43 phone messages in his voice mail. Once a hotline was set up, things worked a bit smoother for the detective. “It’s interesting to see how the media spotlight can tweak a particular case,” Jensen said. Even a March bank robbery got pushed to the back burner when the Stivers went missing. Throughout it all, though, Jensen said the experience helped his department grow and realize what to do when the spotlight goes on. As far as dealing with people like Kelly Clark, deputy commander of the Navajo County Sheriff’s Department in Arizona, Jensen said he was shocked at how helpful other law enforcement agencies were to offer assistance. “Usually, it’s hard to get info from other agencies, but people were stumbling all over each other on this one,” Jensen said. Clark, who said he heard in a meeting Tuesday that an Arizona transport was heading to Washington to bring the Higginbothams back for trial, is also relaxing now that he is under the national media radar. Clark, who had been involved in the Higginbotham case in the past, had his ear to the ground when the national media recognized who was stuck in the snow in Oregon. “The whole case was the sun, moon and stars all lined up for us,” Clark said. “We had no malice looking for the people, but at the academy they tell you to pay attention to small cases. This was reinforce the idea to remember you never know what will happen.” Finally, Rose Hill — Marlo Hill-Stivers’ mother — is over her anger with the media, but said oversimplification of who the family is has tarnished Hill-Stivers’ reputation. “Sometimes they just try to lump it all together,” Hill said of the media. She did, however, recognize the press for getting the story out — which may have ultimately saved the family in the motorhome. The regional and national media were also not totally perfect in reporting the story. The name Higginbotham was consistently spelled incorrectly in initial stories about the family, and exact accounts of the journey and getting stuck on the road vary slightly. But as the community and the family begin to forget, Rose Hill is just reflecting on what was. It seems the only real losers in the story were the Higginbothams. “We’re just thankful that it came out to be the good thing that it was,” Hill said. “I’m just sad the Higginbothams turned our story into what it was.” . Leave a Comment: --> Copyright © 2006 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers. All Rights Reserved.