Ashley Lea Smith had never met Matt Teeters. She didn’t know what he looked like, where he was from, or what kind of person he was.
All she knew was that a hiker was lost in the woods she had spent her whole life exploring. So she called in to work, grabbed her dog, and went to find him.
A First Backpacking Trip Goes Wrong
Matt Teeters and his cousin, Nick Walker, set out in late September on the Eagle Rock Loop, a rugged trail of roughly 27 miles in Arkansas’ Ouachita National Forest. According to Arkansas Breaking News, it was Teeters’ first overnight backpacking trip.
On the second day, Teeters’ feet were blistered and he was falling behind. The cousins were headed for a popular swimming hole called Winding Stair, where a relative was supposed to meet them with water and Gatorade.
Somewhere near the end of that stretch, Teeters followed a trail marker that sent him the wrong way. Within minutes, the two had lost each other.
“Two or three minutes. That’s it,” Walker later wrote in an account shared by the family.
A Long, Cold Night in the Woods
Walker searched for his cousin and then sent an SOS by satellite message. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, the U.S. Forest Service, volunteer fire departments, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, a drone operator and other volunteers joined the search. Some kept looking until around 2 a.m., the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record reported.
Out in the forest, Teeters was trying to find his way back. He told the Sentinel-Record he waited by a creek for about two hours, yelling for help, and heard nothing back.
Around 8 p.m., exhausted and with darkness coming, he stopped and set up camp. He had nearly stepped on two copperhead snakes. He said he slept for about two hours and spent the rest of the night cold and worried that no one would find him.
When the sun came up, he made his way back to Winding Stair and did the smart thing. He waited there and called out for help.
A Stranger Who Knew the Trail
About 20 miles away in the small town of Newhope, Ashley Lea Smith had seen the posts about the missing hiker. She has hiked that area her whole life.
“We knew where he was last spotted,” she told the Sentinel-Record. “His cousin posted on a map. I said, ‘I know that part.'”
She knew how easy it was to get turned around there. The markings have faded, she said, and she had taken a wrong turn on that very trail herself. So she told her sister and her workplace that if he wasn’t found by morning, she would take the day off to look for him.
He wasn’t. So she went, with her 8-year-old dog, Buckey, by her side.
“Buckey, We Found Him”
Smith walked slowly, stopping every couple of minutes to shout, “Search and rescue. Call out. Make some noise,” and then listening.
About a quarter mile from Winding Stair, she said, Buckey’s ears perked up. The next time she yelled, someone yelled back. Buckey headed down to the river, and there was a man in a red shirt sitting on a rock.
“I yelled out, ‘Are you Matt?'” Smith told KTHV, as reported by People. “And he said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Buckey, we found him.'”
“I was incredibly relieved to even see a human being,” Teeters told the Sentinel-Record. Smith gave him a sandwich and an electrolyte drink and drove him back to town in her side-by-side. First responders checked him over and found only scrapes and bruises, and he was reunited with his family.
“Buckey got a lot of belly rubs that day, and beef jerky sticks from everybody,” Smith said.
A Family Says Thank You
Smith didn’t ask for anything. But Teeters’ family wanted to give something back.
His sister, Jennifer Teeters, started a GoFundMe to help pay for repairs and upgrades to Smith’s home, including a new deck and some roof work. The family put in the first $500, and by early October the fundraiser had passed $6,000, according to People.
“Ashley gave our family the news we had spent all night praying for, and we will never be able to fully repay her for that,” Jennifer wrote.
Smith, for her part, still doesn’t think she did anything special.
“I just feel like I’m a person that’s trying to do the right thing, and I had a good dog beside me helping me do it,” she said.
Her advice for other hikers is simple: carry a whistle and a phone battery pack, and always tell two or three people exactly where you are going. And if you ever get lost, stay calm and stay put. Somebody kind might already be on the way.