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Newspaper Archive of
Shelton Mason County Journal
Shelton, Washington
June 26, 1975     Shelton Mason County Journal
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June 26, 1975
 
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o MAURINE HULSE talks of her actions and thoughts during the 16 days she was lost in the woods of Mason County. DON SAMPSON Maurine Hulse, 36, an Alderwood Manor woman as a typist by the telephone company, recently national attention for her miraculous sixteen-day after she had become lost in the dense forest of County. Miss Hulse r disappeared from her home in Alderwood 20. Her partially-stripped car was later found on logging road in the Kamilche Valley. After finding the car, County authorities initiated an intensive search for the woman. It was later found that Miss Hulse had her car on Highway 410 before venturing into the By coincidence she was found by Kamilche Valley Don McDonald in the same area where officers located her car. When found she was suffering from the effects of dehydration, frostbitten feet, numerous cuts, and bruises. The day before she left Mason General this writer discussed the ordeal with her in a taped prompted you not to go to work on May 20th? been down that day. It was one of those days when you to get away from everything. I was working at the company in Seattle, it was a beautiful day and I to get into the car and go for a drive. time did you stop your car and go for a walk? three o'clock I stopped, took out my car blanket I always carry with me, my purse, and went out to a place to sit down and do some thinking. I was out for a while, started back - I don't really remember the I was sure I knew the direction - sure I was going back the car. I never did find the car. It got scary about seven that evening when I still hadn't found the car. were you wearing at the time? wearing blue jeans, a long sleeve blouse, white vinyl long socks and tennis shoes. you have any food or drink with you? no food whatsoever except for some diet sugar pills, packages of chewing gum and that was it. soon as you realized you were lost what went through mind and what did you decide to do then? trying to find the car and when it started to get dark ! going. I was raised in a hunting family and I had a cousin and brother-in-law who had gotten lost and I had heard never to travel at night. I knew enough to find a place to sleep that night so I found two logs that sort of went together and I crawled between them, covered myself with the blanket, and used my purse for a pillow. I was scared to death that night. I. heard noises, twigs breaking. IJaid there and I just shivered. What did you do the next morning? I got up and walked some more. A couple of times I would sit down thinking someone would find my car. Someone might miss me because nobody knew I was going to do this. I kept walking over logs and through brush. I was looking for water because I was getting very thirsty by then. I hadn't had any water at all. It got cloudy that day and that night it rained. How did you finally get water? I found a bunch of trees to get under and there was a log leaning up and I scrunched up under it and reached under the log also and it was kind of pulpy. I pulled this pulp off and squeezed it. I don't know why I knew to do this but I got some water out of it. I'd feel along the log until I found some more and then I'd do the same thing. The water was awful dirty looking but I didn't care. That was how I got water the first week. But some days that first week I didn't find any. Around the end of the second week I found a creek and after that I always tried to stay near running water. • What about food? Well, I had no thoughts of food that first week. All I thought of was waterl On Memorial Day I found a puddle of water and I laid down and drank. I drank so much my stomach got upset and I became nauseated. But that feeling passed. When I finally did think about food the thing I wanted most was a tuna fish sandwich. Funny, huh? Did you have any way to carry water with you? I had this container of pills and 1 dumped them out, put water in it and carried it in my purse. Then I started to get really hungry and I began to think about food all the time. I was starved. That second week my stomach began to ache for food. Did you sleep in different places during the first week? Two nights I was in the same spot because it rained so much. I was just too wet and cold to hike at all. Usually I would curl up by a fallen tree and pull the blanket over my head to keep warm. "I was scared to death that night." What was it like sleeping in the woods with only a thin blanket? I was very cold at night. I don't know what I would have done without that blanket. I would hear animal sounds. There were coyotes howling in the distance. I just couldn't get used to it. Twigs would break around me. I just knew some animal was going to attack me. One night I felt something jump over me. Another night the wind really blew and a large branch crashed a few feet from me. I was scared every night. Did you try eating any vegetation? I tried eating some bark off a tree but it was awful. I saw lots of mushrooms but I was scared to eat them because I didn't know what they were. I found a few green berries - four to be exact - I didn't care if they were green or not. They didn't fill me up but they were nourishment. I had to have something in my stomach. 1 was so weak I could hardly move. O . A 17-year-old Tacoma girl drowned in the North Fork of the Skokomish River in the Staircase area Sunday afternoon. Mason County sheriff's deputies, who assisted in recovering the body, said the girl, Wendy Ann Granquist, and five other teenagers were floating down the river on several large innertubes tied together when the innertubes hit a log and the girl was thrown off and pulled under by the strong undercurrent. She became lodged under the log, officers said. The accident occurred about lO0 yards inside the Olympic National Park boundary. Four Mason County sheriff's deputies, 10 U.S. Park Service employees, two U.S. Forest Service employees and one Jefferson Cotmty deputy sheriff assisted in recovering the body, officers said. Two divers from the Mason County sheriff's office and two from the park service went into the water in the search for the body and its recovery. The sheriff's office received a call for assistance from the park service about 2:15 p.m. Sunday. The call came from the park ranger at Staircase. Thursday, June 26, 1975 Eighty-ninth Year, Number 26 4 Sections - 36 Pages 15' Cents Per Copy ana an wins mu er conviction Mason County Prosecutor Byron McClanahan wound up the major part of his work as special prosecutor in Thurston County for the trial of James G. (Chloe) Wilson when Wilson was sentenced last Friday. McClanahan had handled the trial of the case in which a jury found Wilson guilty of first degree murder, rape, sodomy and abduction in the death of eight-year-old Janet Kleiner. Wilson was sentenced Friday by Judge Hewitt Henry to two life terms plus 30 years in prison to run consecutively. McClanahan, in his arguments to the court before the sentence was imposed, asked for castration of Wilson as well as maximum terms on each of the charges. McClanahan, in asking for castration, which is authorized for sex offenders under an old law in this state, said, "I think an operation would change him. I don't feel there is any cure for him. I feel he should be castrated. He is a sexual deviate." Judge Henry didn't mention McClanahan's request in passing sentence on Wilson. McClanahan said this is the third time he has asked for castration for sexual offenders. Were you in much physical pain? During the second week my feet got so bad. Later I was told that tennis shoes are one of the worst things you can wear in the woods because during the day they absorb the heat and at night they absorb the cold. So I was getting two extremes on my feet. The soles are nothing. Everything comes through - rocks - everything. You might as well have nothing on your feet. My feet were so puffed up and hurt so much that one of those nights during the second week I had to take a piece of stick and bite on it to keep from screaming out because of the pain. It was during that night that the pain passed and a sort of numbness set in. After that I couldn't walk too far. Did you ever think the authorities had called off the search for you? Well, I didn't know. But during the second week I heard helicopters and I got hope again. Somebody's going to find me. I could see the helicopters flying overhead but they couldn't see me. I tried to wave and I found out later that I might have been able to signal them with a mirror I had in my purse, but I didn't know that then. Were you terrified this whole time? I wasn't terrified but I did give up hope of being found. I just knew I was going to die and never see my family again. I'd sit down and wouldn't go on for a few hours and I'd think why go on? Nobody is ever going to find me. But I kept on because I knew I was still alive. Did you dream at night? I dreamed a lot about people. Especially about people who had died. It's strange but I dreamed more about them than people who were living. What did you do during the day to occupy your time? Time went so slow. I'd look at a few Avon books I had in my purse. I had a few pictures of my animals at home. I'd take everything out of my purse and rearrange it just to have something to do. Sometimes I would think about my childhood. Other times I'd think about what I would do if I got out alive. JERRY PITTMAN nolo, IS unusual anlsm Jerry Pittman, a medical technologist-microbiologist at Mason General Hospital, reeenfly presented a paper at a national meeting on the procedures he used to identify an unusual -organism which was causing a health problem for a man' who was hospitalized. The paper, on actinobacillus a ctinomycele mcomitanis, was presented at a meeting of the American Society of Medical Technologists in San Francisco, California.It will also be published in "Laboratory Medicine," the journal for medical technologists. Pittman said after his identification of the organism as the one which was causing a disease problem, he had compiled more information on it and had prepared the paper on it to let others know how to identify the organism and that it can cause disease, so it will not be dismissed as unimportant when tests are made. The identification was made from blood samples which were sent to the laboratory after the man had been admitted to the hospital. After the identification of what was causing the problem, the man was treated and that problem cleared up. Pittman said he did a series of tests on blood samples taken at different times to make sure of his identification and that it was not caused by some outside source of contamination. In order to verify his findings, blood samples were sent to the Federal Center for Disease Control, which confirmed what the local medical technologist had found. Pittman has been employed at Mason General Hospital for about three years, having come here after his graduation from the University of Washington in 1972. How much ground did you cover during those 16 days? I don't know exactly, but they said I crossed three counties: Thurston, Grays Harbor and Mason. How were you found? I had pulled myself up from a creek and had fallen asleep. I couldn't go very far without falling asleep. And I heard a noise about 3:00 in the afternoon and it was a farmer driving a bulldozer. And I said, "Please help me," and he looked at me. And he said, "Are you that girl they've been looki0g for?" And he ran down that hill so fast. At that point my body just gave out and I couldn't walk. Did you ever give up hope? No, I just wanted to live. I was determined not to die in the woods. I think my determination is what kept me going. Has your ordeal changed your outlook on life? Yes. Everyone looks good to me. I've never been so happy. I'm just so lucky to be alive. Thank God I'm alive. Footnote: Miss Huise expressed extreme thanks to the warm treatment she received from the sheriff's office and the staff at Mason General Hospital. The Shelton City Commission voted at its meeting Tuesday night that no environmental impact statement would be needed for a proposed 50-unit apartment complex on the north side of Fairmont Street. The commission also voted that in the future, authority to decide whether or not an environmental impact statement is needed on some projects will be delegated to the city engineer's office. City Engineer Howard Godat told the commission the law allows the elected officials to delegate that authority and that in some cases it was possible for his office to make a determination where the environmental impact would be slight and that following this procedure would allow those with projects to get approval sooner by not having to wait for a regular commission meeting. Godat said any project on which there was a question or which involved another agency or department other than the public works department, the question would be brought to the commission. The commission's policy on these determinations in the past has been to get a recommendation from Godat. The recommenda- tions so far have been accepted in every case.