The mayor of the tiny town of Eagle says everyone knows that the Village Public Safety Officer there always goes out of his way to help people in need. So, they weren’t surprised to hear that the VPSO spent hours last week with a man from Texas trying to convince him that he really shouldn’t try to spend the winter in a cave.
More than a century ago, Robert Service wrote that “strange things are done under the midnight sun.” And that pretty much describes the out-of-state visitor’s plan to dig a cave in a remote spot off the Taylor Highway and overwinter there.
“From my understanding, he had actually just dug straight down into the ground, about seven or eight feet, and then had dug horizontally off of that,” said John Dougherty, an Alaska State Troopers spokesperson.
Dougherty says VPSO Nathan Becker told him that the man from Texas decided to burrow down into a gravel pit off milepost 96 of the Taylor Highway, because that’s where he ran out of gas last summer.
“And so he decided that would work, and he stopped there and had been living there since June,” he said.
Dougherty declined to identify the 35-year-old Texas man, because he wasn’t charged with any crime. And he said Becker, the VPSO, was out of town and unavailable for comment.
Eagle Mayor Dan Helmer said word got around that there some out-of-state guy hunkered down in a cave off the Taylor Highway near the Jack Wade Junction, about 70 miles south of town.
“People in town kind of heard rumors about this guy out there,” Helmer said.
The mayor added that Becker got concerned about the Texas man when the Department of Transportation closed the Taylor Highway 10 days ago. And because the big winter storm that hit Fairbanks this week was headed their way.
“The VPSO went above and beyond going out there after the road was closed and in the inclement weather,” he said.
Dougherty, the Trooper spokesperson, says Becker wanted to reason with the Texas man and explain why spending the winter in a hole in the ground in that remote spot is not a good idea.
“From what the VPSO told me, they talked for several hours,” Dougherty said, “and he said they talked about everything, from football, life dreams, aspirations, ambitions … And when the timing was right, through the course of that conversation, he just shared some of the basic realities of winters in Alaska.”
After about seven hours, the VPSO convinced him to reconsider. He offered to help him get his rig running so he could make it to Tok, where he could get some help. The next day, true to his word, Becker returned with about 15 gallons of gas and another VPSO, who helped fix the man’s vehicle and escorted him to Tok.
The mayor said says that’s just how Becker operates.
“He's a helpful guy,” Helmer said. “He's been in Eagle for, oh, many years, and he's got a good reputation. He goes out of his way to help people. And you know, that's what you need in a community like this.”
Dougherty says Troopers don’t know where the Texas man is now. But after his conversation with Becker, it seems likely that wherever he is, it’s above ground.
