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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend March 24, 2006 Pete Stivers and Marlo Hill-Stivers say they�ve been barraged by media outlets � including �Oprah� and CBS� �Early Morning Show� � since their ordeal in the mountains. Mail Tribune / Roy Musitelli Seventeen days, fifteen minutes The Stiverses cope with a media frenzy after their disappearance, a two-week long search and rescue that brought national attention By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune ASHLAND — Seventeen days in a snowbound motor home have brought 15 minutes of fame to an Ashland family whose puzzling disappearance and safe return quickly moved from search lights to spotlights. The alphabet-soup of television networks, cable news shows, newspapers and even potential book and movie deals has overtaken Pete Stivers and his family like the Oregon mountain snow that stranded them without a trace March 4 before their rescue Tuesday. Plopped in the middle of a talk-show wrestling match — Oprah’s people dropped interest, Stivers said, after the family appeared on CBS’ "The Early Show" — and still sore from their hike to freedom, Stivers and his wife, Marlo Hill-Stivers, are trying to shake the media glare. "All the media attention is really awkward," Stivers, 29, said Thursday hours before part of the couple’s Ashland news conference was broadcast live on Northwest Cable News. "The kids are eating it up. But me? I don’t have words for it. It’s mind-blowing that it’s blown up to be this big. But, really, it’s just us. "Besides," he said, "everybody already knows about it." Advertisement It, of course, is the botched trip to the coast that transformed the Stiverses, their two children, and Stivers’ mother and step-father into the subject of a massive search. It captivated everyone from media and missing-persons organizations to clairvoyants and skeptics who claimed the ordeal might have been staged. Originally from Arizona by way of Arkansas, the Stiverses had never seen the Pacific Ocean and thought the visit by Pete Stivers’ nomadic parents — mom Becky Higginbotham and stepfather Elbert Higginbotham — presented the right time. Along with the Stivers children, 9-year-old Sabastyan and 8-year-old Gabrayell, the Stiverses and Higginbothams took the latter’s 35-foot motor home March 4 on what they thought was a "scenic route" to Gold Beach. They missed their intended thoroughfare — the closed Bear Camp Road from Galice to Agness east of Gold Beach — and ended up stranded on a remote logging road north of the Rogue River Wilderness Area. It took them three nights to get completely stuck, Pete Stivers said. The first night, they got stuck in mostly mud on a narrow, one-lane road and decided to sleep there before reassessing their predicament in the morning. But they awoke to thick snow. Hill-Stivers used a dustpan and Stivers used his hands to dig the motor home out and they headed uphill, moving only 50 to 100 yards before nightfall, he said. They did the same the next day until they reached a spot where they could turn the motor home around. "We thought we were home free," Stivers said. "We didn’t realize we were plowing the snow in front of us as we headed down." They became impossibly bogged down March 6, and "decided to treat it like a camping trip" while awaiting either rescue crews or the snow to melt, Stivers said. With plenty of fuel, propane and Y2K rations, they monitored the search and rescue effort on a small black-and-white television. In an attempt to assist rescuers, they built signal fires and trails in the snow and even fired distress shots from Becky Higginbotham’s .357-caliber handgun. They heard logging trucks and airplanes and a helicopter but were never seen or heard by rescuers. Psychics and others who believed they saw the Stiverses in a dream telephoned police and media offering tips while searchers grew frustrated that the family seemingly disappeared into thin air. After a news report that the search was suspended — actually, only the main ground search was suspended but air searches continued — Hill-Stivers and Stivers decided to hike out. "It was hell trying to get through that," Hill-Stivers said. "That’s all me and Pete were saying — there’s nothing worse than crotch-deep snow." They estimated their hike to be about 10 miles, sleeping Monday night in a tent beneath a pine tree. A Bureau of Land Management engineer discovered them Tuesday morning about 15 miles west of Glendale. Sno-Cat crews rescued the remaining family, all unhurt, three hours later. Their very public reunion outside the Glendale City Hall ushered in the media blitz. Satellite trucks lined Clay Street outside the home of Rose Hill, Hill-Stivers’ mother, while cameramen tried to get glimpses of the convalescing family and kids playing outside. Stivers said book editors and film producers have telephoned his house since their return, but he hasn’t talked to them. Though baffled at the attention, he said he would consider signing a book or film deal if the rest of his family agreed. "It would be real nice to get out of my income level for once in my life," said Stivers, wearing the sweatshirt and welding pants given to him by volunteers with the Glendale ambulance after his rescue. Anonymous skeptics telephoned the Mail Tribune and other media outlets suggesting that Stivers staged the ordeal to gain notoriety. "Holy cow," Stivers laughed. "I don’t know how you could put all that snow on top of yourself." Ashland police Detective Brent Jensen, who worked the missing persons case, agreed. "If it was a hoax, then I was duped," said Jensen, who also logged some FOX News face-time over the case. Stivers said he expects the timer to ding on his 15 minutes by next week, when he returns to his job at 7-Eleven — unless the publicity can gain him just one more offer. "Well, I’ve been trying to get a welding job," Stivers said. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail Seventeen days, fifteen minutes ">[email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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