Couple travels on horseback, finds missing boy

The Gromans joined the search party to help find James Estes

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Children wander away in supermarkets, drug stores, residential neighborhoods and even in the wilderness.

On the morning of Oct. 8 7-year-old James Estes was camping on Mount Charleston with his father and other members of a local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The boy wandered from the campsite while the others were eating breakfast.

"He said he was looking for pine nuts," Colleen Groman, a registered nurse, said.

Colleen and her husband, Herman Groman, chief of security at The Orleans, found the boy Oct. 9 some time between 2 and 3 p.m., about 10 miles from where he was camping. James was lost for more than 30 hours.

The Gromans decided to join the search party because they wanted to help. They are quite familiar with Mount Charleston and they own horses ready for the mountain trek.

After riding for about three hours the married couple decided to stop and have lunch near Macks Canyon.

"We rested there about 45 minutes and ate our lunch," Colleen said. "As we were getting ready to leave, our horses started looking in a specific direction and their ears were pointing in that direction."

"Their (horses) ears are like radars," Herman said. "They point in the direction of the noise."

So the Gromans waited and watched.

"We just kind of listened and saw him coming through the brush," she said. James was wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt, carrying his jacket. They offered him water and a cheese sandwich.

"He said, 'I really don't like this kind of cheese,' " Herman said laughing.

"He was just such a darling little boy," Colleen added.

Rather than to disturb his palate, James ate some carrots instead of the sandwich and drank three bottles of water. He had eaten pine nuts while he was lost. The Gromans were amazed at how lively and funny the Henderson second grader was after going through such a trying experience.

"I think we were more traumatized than he was," Colleen said.

Colleen, a registered nurse, asked James if he had been warm enough and if he had slept at all. He said he was warm enough, having two jackets, but he lost one when he became startled after hearing what he thought sounded like a pig during the night.

"And he said he couldn't remember if he had slept or not," she said.

"Imagining if this were our grandchild, it made it kind of personal," Herman said. "The worst was that we had him and we couldn't alert anyone because there was no cell phone coverage."

The Gromans headed down the mountain with James and another volunteer for about two hours, at which point the cell phones were operable. During the ride down James was laughing and talkative.

"He kept saying he was trying to find Henderson," Herman said. "But he was walking in the wrong direction."

At press time the Gromans had a dinner scheduled with James and his parents.

The Gromans bought James a whistle and a compass.

"It says, 'May you always find your way,' " Colleen said smiling.

James had told the Gromans that not too long ago he wandered away from camp and got lost, but not for nearly as long.

"We think they need to take up soccer," Herman joked.

"I don't think that anything was as personally rewarding as this," he said. "It was happenstance."

"It was being in the right place at the right time," Colleen Groman added.

The couple lives in the Northwest part of the valley with their four horses and enjoy spending time with their two children and four grandchildren, while "playing cowboy on the weekends."