MAN SPENDS DAYS IN HIS SNOWBOUND TRUCK; TRIP SOUTH TURNS INTO DISTRESS WHEN STORM HITS GEORGIA

Imagine spending three days trapped inside a Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck with another person and a hungry cat. Put that truck on a deadlocked highway in Georgia and add about four feet of snow.

Sound like the perfect way to end a spring break vacation? Randy Compton doesn't think so.

Compton, a criminal justice student at Southeast Missouri State University, had traveled to Orlando, Fla., for spring break to see some old friends. When he heard about the impending storm on Friday, he left immediately, hoping to avoid getting stranded. But the snow was already starting to fall.

"On Interstate 75 just north of Atlanta I hit a snow bank and ended up in the median," Compton said. "A highway patrolman came along and radioed for a wrecker."

When the wrecker came, the driver demanded $50 to pull the truck out. Compton only had $23.

After the wrecker driver took what cash he had and pulled his truck out, Compton got going again, but not very far. A few miles up the interstate highway, he was forced to pull to the side of the road.

"That was at about 11 p.m. Friday," Compton said. "I was out of gas and had no cash."

Compton wandered outside his truck to survey his situation. Parked about 40 meters behind his truck was a car with a window broken out.

"The cold just broke the window clear out of that guy's car," Compton said. "So that's when we put our heads together to try and stay alive."

The other man's car had a full tank of gas; Compton's truck was intact and a smaller area to heat.

"We cut a 2-liter Coke bottle in half, using the top half as a funnel and the bottom half to carry gas we siphoned out of his car to my truck," Compton said. "After we were done, we put his cat into the truck and there we sat."

The men used a plastic tarp from the bed of the pickup truck as a blanket.

They awoke the next morning to find his truck securely wedged in a four-foot deep snow drift and his passenger's foot frozen to the windshield.

"When the National Guard got there, they diagnosed him with frostbite in his heel and in three toes," Compton said.

The two men would periodically alternate getting out of the truck to clean the snow off the hood and headlights. "We really looked forward to getting out," Compton said. "It was pretty crammed inside."

The men had nothing to eat in the truck except a box of powdered doughnuts and a bottle of Tabasco sauce. The man with the cat had only one pouch of food for the animal.

Compton said that he wandered up the exit ramp on Saturday to call his family from a nearby store. The store was closed because of the power outage, and people had formed long lines at the pay phones outside.

"I wanted to tell my family that I was OK, and that I was staying warm," Compton said. "My fiancee was already worried sick about me. She called the Cape Girardeau police who gave her the number to the county sheriff's department where I was in Georgia."

Compton and his new companion went to a nearby waffle house to get something to eat. "For waffles, two eggs, sausage and two cups of coffee, they charged me $15," he said.

Back in the truck, the men melted snow in a cup on the dashboard of the truck and ate the doughnuts.

Meanwhile, they were completely shut off from the outside world. "Just before I left for Florida, my radio was stolen out of my truck," Compton said. "We had no idea how much it had snowed or when we would get help."

But help did come Monday in the form of the Georgia National Guard and snow removal equipment from Tennessee. The National Guard gave MREs military rations to stranded motorists and medical attention to those who required it.

Compton's companion arranged for an uncle who drove a tractor-trailer truck to pick him up and take him home to Indiana. But the trucker refused to take the cat along.

"I've still got the cat," Compton said. "He said he'd come and get her as soon as he could I gave him directions to Cape Girardeau."

Compton returned to his Cape Girardeau home early Tuesday. "I was really fortunate," he said. "I realize now that things could have turned out a lot worse than they did."