What would you do for The Perfect Christmas Tree?

[Pocket Lady]

Family lost on Christmas tree hunt found


© ITN 2007


A father and his three children who were missing for four days while searching for a Christmas tree in the California wilderness have been found.

Freddy Dominguez, 38, and his three children Christopher, 18, Alexis, 15, and Joshua, 12, were air-lifted to safety having spent four days huddled in a culvert.


The family became lost while looking for a pine tree to chop down, after a snow storm hit the region just north of Sacramento.

The family were wearing just jeans, sweat shirts and coats and survived by huddling in the culvert, sheltered from the outside by twigs and tree branches.


The father and eldest son blocked the wind and pushed the youngest children deep into the shelter.


Mr Dominguez said: "My kids are relying on me and I'm scared, you know? You can't let them know that you're scared so I kept telling them we're going to be all right, I promise you we're going to be all right."
He continued: "My daughter heard a helicopter. So I jumped up barefoot and I ran across the rocks, went up there, found the snow, it was deep by that time and just started waving my hands and when they turned around I was just praising God and saying thank you Lord."


Mr Dominguez recounted how he and his children found water to drink rather than eating snow, as he remembered reading that it could cause hypothermia.


The father also tore up fabric from his sweatshirt and wrapped it around his children's feet in order to stave off frostbite.


The family were found less than a mile-and-a-half from the road and said they had lost their bearings by going from pine tree to pine tree in search of the perfect Christmas tree.

[aliando]

did they get a good tree though?

[tedthewolf]

....on the trail of the lonesome pine

"that's another fine mess you got me into Daddy"