By JULIA WILSON

SAGUACHE — One mountain Dew, melted snow and the companionship of a faithful dog helped a Chesterton, Indiana man survive three days alone in the mountains.

Journalist Peggy Dattilo, a friend of the family, sent out emergency emails to area papers Saturday to alert people to the disappearence of Jason Pede, 31.

The last time he had used his debit card was Wednesday night at a gas station in Dulce, NM. A trace was put on the GPS on his cell phone, but the closest the cell phone company could come to locating Pede was to say the phone was somewhere within 100 miles of Center, Col.

“We were notified he was missing on Thursday,” said Mark Werts, an investigator with the Saguache County Sheriff’s Office. “All we knew was that he was heading first for Aspen, and then to Pueblo, and he had not arrived at either, and he was driving a 2000 silver Lincoln Navigator.”

Datillo said Pede’s wife and children were panicing. She said the couple had hit some difficult financial times, and had hit upon the idea of transporting things around the country to make some money. The dog was being delivered to Aspen, he was supposed to go to Pueblo to pick up some cats, and in the back of the SUV he had some furniture someone had bought off of e-Bay that he had to deliver somewhere else.

“He had started off on one road, but got stuck behind a snow plow that was going very slow,” Dattilo said. “To get by the snow plow he turned off on a side road that someone had told him was a shortcut to Aspen.”

The short cut he took was Saguache County Road 31, a road that is not generally plowed so it gets piled up pretty high with snow.

Pede continued up the road until it got as high as the hood on his car and then could go no further, Dattilo said. At that point he decided to turn around and go back the way he had come, but while turning the SUV ran off the road and turned over on its side.

Dattilo said Pede tried to stay warm by turning on his heater periodically. He eventually made a fire, and ended up burning the furniture in the back of his truck.

“They are really having financial problems, and burning the furniture is going to really put them in a hole,” said Dattilo. “But it kept him from freezing, and that is what is most important.”

By Sunday morning the SUV had run out of gas and Pede was afraid he would freeze to death if he stayed with the vehicle any longer. So he left the dog in the vehicle, which Dattilo said had been rescued from a shelter and Pede was afraid it would traumatize the animal to be out in the extreme cold, and started walking back the way he had come.

Pede walked seven miles when he ran into Hwy 114. He saw a car and waved it down, Werts said.

“A couple from Amarillo, Tex. Was driving by, and they picked him up and brought him to the Saguache County Sherriff’s Office,” Werts said. “We were ready for him. At 9:45 a.m. Sunday morning the 911 center in Alamosa received a call that a man had been picked up at mile post 53 west of Saguache.”

Pede was checked out by medical personnel, and declared to be in good health, though he was hungry.

“I’m not sure what we gave him to eat, but it was probably jail food,” Werts said. “I would bet it tasted pretty good for him.”

The dog was quickly rescued, too.

“Sgt. Lyn Wubben with the forest service picked up the dog and brought him down to Hwy. 114 where he was transferred to State Patrolman Sgt. Robinson,” Werts said. “Robinson took him to Alpine Veterenarian Hospital in Monte Vista and he was OK, too.”

Dattilo said the Pedes’ have received a lot of attention, and some television station had flown them out to Colorado so they could appear on the station Tuesday morning.

“They were so scared when they couldn’t locate him,” Dattilo said. “But it has had a happy ending, and that is what counts.”