Transcription
This happened a couple weeks into the summer. I had just graduated high school, and it was my first and probably last summer without any real responsibilities, career or academic-wise. Everyone knows the beginning of the summer is the best time of the year. So, it's safe to say that I was living my best life at that point.
In Wyoming, there's this popular tradition where the new graduates drive way out into the plateaus and go rock climbing. Well, I'm not actually sure if it's a tradition anywhere besides my school, but I like to think it is. It's kind of a right of passage thing, celebrating your freedom by doing something that requires a little skill and a lot of nerve. My friends and I have been talking about it for weeks, and we finally decided to make it happen. It felt like the perfect way to kick off what I hoped would be an unforgettable summer vacation.
It was me, Alexandra, Nick, and Jack. We've all been friends since middle school, and Alex was the only one with a car reliable enough to make the drive. A Jeep that she was obsessed with and jumped at any excuse to take off-road. She was also the designated driver since she doesn't drink, which worked out perfectly for the rest of us who were planning to bring a few beers to celebrate once we reached the top of whatever plateau we decided to climb.
Our plan was to check out the Flaming Gorge lookout first, then drive through the plateau area to find a good spot for climbing. The lookout was incredible, one of those views that makes you remember why you love living in Wyoming. After spending about an hour taking pictures and just soaking it in, we started heading back toward Route 80, taking our time and keeping an eye out for potential climbing spots. We were driving along Highway 141 when we spotted this really cool area off the side of the road. There were these massive rock formations that looked perfect for climbing. Not too technical, but challenging enough to be worth the effort. Alex pulled into a small gravel lot, and we grabbed our gear and filled our backpacks with drinks.
The plateau we chose was maybe a 15-minute climb to the top. Nothing too crazy, just a steady scramble up the rock face with enough handholds and footholds to make it manageable. I have a bunch of pictures from that day, mostly because Alex insisted we get a million pictures of her, so I'll include some of them. Alex went first since she was the most experienced climber among us, followed by me, then Nick, then Jack bringing up the rear.
The view from the top was absolutely worth it. You could see for miles in every direction, just endless stretches of Wyoming wilderness. We cracked open our beers and were just sitting there enjoying the moment, talking about some of our other friends from school. I was just kind of staring into space, admiring the scenery, when I noticed a car speeding down the highway. It was a red pickup truck. To my surprise, after passing Alex's car, it screeched to a halt in the middle of the highway. I kept watching, and it actually started reversing right there in the middle of the highway. I pointed it out to my friends, and the four of us got a little quieter, all wondering what the truck was doing. It reversed until it could turn into the lot we had parked in, which it did.
We all watched as someone got out of the truck. From our distance, we could tell it was a man based on his height and build, but we couldn't make out much detail. At first, we thought maybe he was just another person looking for a place to climb or hike or just stop and rest. But then he started walking around Alex's Jeep in a way that just immediately seemed wrong. He was peering into the windows, trying the door handles, and generally inspecting the car like he was planning to break into it. That's when Nick yelled, "Hey," from the top of the plateau to announce our presence and let that guy know that the car was not unattended. We saw the guy jump a little and start looking around, clearly unsure where the voice had come from. Finally, he spotted us from on top the plateau, and he actually waved at us. That made us think it was over, that he'd probably get back in his truck, knowing that he couldn't get away with doing anything.
To our surprise, though, he kept poking around Alex's car. In response to that, Jack yelled that we were armed, which I still think was a bad idea. We obviously didn't have any weapons with us, but I figured Jack thought the bluff might scare the guy off. Instead, the man looked up at us and yelled back something that made me freeze up. He said, "Me, too, kiddo." Then he held something up in the air and waved it around, presumably a gun, but I couldn't tell from so far away.
What happened next was like something out of a nightmare. The man started ramming his shoulder and elbow into the Jeep's windows, clearly trying to break in. We could hear the impact even from where we were sitting. Alex was furious and started screaming at him to get away from the car. The rest of us joined in, yelling and making as much noise as possible while we started scrambling down the plateau as quickly as we could safely manage. I've never climbed down anything so fast in my life. By the time we heard the sound of glass shattering, we'd made it to the ground and were sprinting across the lot toward the Jeep.
The man saw us coming and yelled for us to stop, pointing what I can now tell was definitely a gun directly at us. We had no choice but to stop and put our hands up. The man told us to throw our phones and wallets on the ground, which we did without hesitation. Then he ordered us to walk backward while he collected our stuff, keeping the gun trained on us the entire time. I was close enough now to get a good look at his face. He was an older white guy, maybe in his 50s, with a scraggly beard and kind of weathered features. Nothing particularly distinctive, which was frustrating because I knew it would be impossible to identify him among a group of generic-looking white men.
After collecting all of our belongings, he pulled out a knife and punctured one of Alex's tires. Then he walked back to his pickup truck, which I noticed didn't have any license plates, and drove off without another word. Alex was livid, and I don't blame her. I was mostly scared from being held at gunpoint, but if I were in her shoes, I'd be furious as well. Not only had this guy robbed us and damaged her car, but we couldn't even call the police or chase after him since he'd taken our phones and disabled the Jeep.
Jack and I changed the tire as fast as possible. But I'm pretty sure all of us knew there was no way we'd be able to do it quick enough. Once we were back on the road, Alex drove as fast as she could in the direction the pickup had gone, but he was long gone. We gave up soon after that. Nick knew the way back to town by heart, so we decided to just head home and figure out what to do from there. As soon as we got to Alex's house, we used her mom's phone to call the police. We gave them a description of the man and his truck, but without license plates or any other identifying information, there wasn't much they could do except keep an eye out for someone matching the description. We never heard anything back from the police, obviously. And as far as I know, the guy was never caught. It completely ruined what should have been one of the best days of our summer, and I don't think any of us felt safe going out to remote areas like that for at least a few months. I definitely didn't.
[Music]
My name is Sophia. This happened 3 years ago when I was 19. My older brother, Luke, had just graduated from college in California, and the two of us were driving cross-country back home to New Jersey. Since he'd been living out there for 4 years, he had accumulated a whole apartment's worth of stuff: furniture, electronics, books, everything. And there was no way he could fly back with all of it. But that wasn't the main reason we were doing it. I mean, cross-country road trip signed me up for that any day of the week. I considered it a summer vacation, better even. We could have taken the direct route through Nevada and Colorado, but Luke wanted to see more of the country he'd been studying about, and I had never been to places like Zion or the Grand Canyon either, so we decided to take the scenic route along the southern edge.
Luke insisted on renting a U-Haul instead of just shipping everything or selling it and starting fresh back home. Honestly, I think he was also trying to save money wherever he could, like a typical fresh college graduate. The U-Haul wasn't huge, but it was big enough that I felt like we were driving a small moving truck across the country. Before we left, both our parents and pretty much every travel forum we looked at had the same warning: "Be careful in New Mexico." It wasn't that the whole state was dangerous, but there were stories about scams targeting travelers along with crime in some of the smaller towns and just generally sketchy situations in the more remote desert areas. Our dad specifically told us not to stop there unless we absolutely had to, and if we did, to stick to major gas stations and get back on the highway as quickly as possible. Luke and I agreed that we'd just drive straight through New Mexico without stopping. We'd fill up in Arizona, drive through as fast as possible, and stop again once we hit Texas. It seemed like a reasonable plan.
The first part of the trip was amazing. Zion was incredible, and the Grand Canyon was everything I'd hoped it would be. Driving through Arizona was actually really beautiful in a way I hadn't expected. But somewhere in the remote stretch of New Mexico, our plan fell apart. The U-Haul was getting worse gas mileage than Luke had anticipated, and the gauge was dropping faster than we'd calculated. In hindsight, it was probably a little naive to assume we'd be able to make it through the whole state without stopping. We started looking for the next gas station along the highway, but according to our GPS, it was still about 40 miles away. The gauge was already below a quarter tank, and Luke was getting nervous about whether we'd make it. He pulled over to check the map, and that's when we realized we didn't really have a choice. There was a small town about 10 miles ahead that showed up on the GPS as having a gas station. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than risking running out of gas in the middle of the desert.
The town was tiny, probably no more than a few hundred people, if that. It had that weird stillness that some small desert towns have, like everyone's inside hiding from the heat, even though it wasn't particularly hot that day. There were a few run-down buildings, a small main street, and not much else. We didn't see any other travelers or cars passing through, which felt strange since we were still relatively close to a major highway. The gas station was one of those generic places with a few pumps and a small convenience store attached. As Luke was filling up the tank, I noticed we were getting some odd looks from the few locals who were around. Nothing aggressive, just lingering stares that made me uncomfortable. There was this guy leaning up against the convenience store smoking a cigarette who I kept catching eyes with, and I had to physically force myself not to look at him. I told myself it was probably just because we were obviously not from there and we were driving a U-Haul with California plates, but nothing happened.
After Luke finished fueling up, I tried to navigate us back to the highway. That should have been the simple part. We could literally see the highway from certain intersections in the town, but every road we took seemed to lead us further away from it. It was the strangest thing. We'd drive toward where we knew the highway was, and the road would curve or dead-end or just take us in the completely wrong direction. It was like the entire town was literally designed to inconvenience us, as ridiculous as that sounds. And before you ask why we weren't using the GPS, well, we were, or at least we were trying to, but it wasn't helping. It was clear that Google hadn't updated that location in ages because the map kept routing us to roads that didn't exist anymore or were inaccessible entirely. And on top of all that, the signal was practically non-existent out there. So, it would go through cycles of brief connection followed by nothingness for minutes on end. We ended up driving around the same few blocks multiple times, and I was getting increasingly anxious. Luke was trying to stay calm, but I could tell he was frustrated, too. It started feeling more and more unnatural, like there was something uninviting about that place that we were supposed to have stayed away from. I can't describe it, but that feeling of literally seeing the highway, but never being able to actually reach it was just so bizarre and deeply unsettling.
After another 20 minutes of driving in circles, Luke decided to go back to the gas station and just ask for directions the old-fashioned way. I begged him not to, but he practically yelled at me, saying we were literally trapped in the one place we were told to stay away from. I could tell he was pretty freaked out at that point, so I just kept my mouth shut. After returning to the gas station, he went inside while I waited in the van. When he came out, he had this worried expression on his face. He got in and said the guy working there had given him directions, but they seemed unnecessarily complicated. According to the clerk, we needed to drive 17 miles in the opposite direction from the highway through some desert back roads to eventually loop back to an on-ramp. I stared at him like he had lost his mind. In what world would we need to drive 17 miles in the wrong direction when we could see the highway from where we were sitting? I asked Luke what the guy was like, and he said he seemed friendly enough, but there was something off about how confident he was about the directions, like he was trying really hard to convince Luke that this roundabout route was the only way. Luke also mentioned that the clerk had been asking a lot of questions about where we were going and how long we would be traveling.
Before I could even say it, Luke was like, "I don't trust it whatsoever. We need to get the hell out of here." He just started driving, and I didn't object. He eventually pulled over on a quiet side street to figure out what to do next. The GPS still wasn't functioning properly, and I felt myself beginning to hyperventilate. There was a little part of me that couldn't help but think something really terrible was about to happen. And then, as if on cue, a dusty pickup truck pulled up beside us. I felt my heart starting to race, and I looked over at Luke, who, from what I could tell, was already preparing to speed off should it come to that. The truck's window rolled down, and the guy asked Luke if we had broken down or were lost. Luke stared at the guy for a good few seconds before answering, clearly trying to gauge whether we were in danger or not. I sat there in the passenger seat trying to control my breathing. That's how freaked out I was. Had I been alone, I don't know what I would have done.
After a tense few moments, Luke just said we were heading for the highway. He also described the route we were planning on taking to get there, which I realized were the directions the gas station clerk had given us. I didn't have the best view of the man from where I was sitting, but based on the tone of his voice, it sounded like he got really serious after hearing my brother speak. He asked us if we were crazy and said we should definitely not follow those directions. He went on to say that the route my brother had described would take us toward a really desolate area that was suspected to be a drug-running hot spot. Instead, he gave us alternate directions, then said it was a miracle we hadn't been robbed already, considering how clueless we were and how badly we stuck out, driving a U-Haul and all. Then, before we could even thank him, he drove off.
Neither Luke nor I said anything after that. Luke just started driving, following the man's directions. Sure enough, about a mile outside of town, there was this gravel road that was easy to miss if you weren't looking for it. It was the least intuitive, most convoluted highway entrance I'd ever seen, but after following the road for a good while, it did actually get us back onto the highway, and that was that. Luke and I talked a little bit about the whole thing, but I don't think either of us wanted to harp on it too much. We obviously laugh about it now, and our whole family knows the story and asks us to tell it every so often, but at the time, it was the most unsettling thing that's ever happened to us. I'll never forget that indescribable feeling of being there. It was like this mix of dread and anticipation and anxiety blended into one. My brother described it as a kind of breathless limbo where you're not quite suffocating, but you can feel it coming. I never want to experience that again.
[Music]
This happened 5 years ago, five summers ago to be exact. My girlfriend at the time, let's just call her P.S., had just graduated from college, with me having graduated a year earlier. We aren't together anymore, but there's no bad blood between us, and I don't regret a single bit of our relationship, even though it eventually fell apart. She was mixed, half Croatian and half Brazilian. And the two of us had always talked about going on a European trip together after finishing college. And if there's one thing you should know about P.S., it's that if she put her mind to something, she was going to stop at nothing to see it through. Call it the Latin blood. That's always the joke I made. That's just how she was. So, as soon as she graduated, the two of us started planning the summer vacation we had always fantasized about.
There was one glaring issue, though. We were both painfully broke, so we'd have to cheap it. The itinerary we ended up settling on was pretty ambitious for two people on a shoestring budget. We'd spend a week in Croatia, finishing up with two nights in Rijeka, which was P.S.'s grandparents' hometown. She had never been there before, but she'd grown up hearing stories about it from her grandmother. And I could tell she was excited to see where her family came from. Because we were trying to save every possible cent, we couldn't afford any of the nice hotels or even decent hostels. Instead, we ended up booking the cheapest Airbnbs and travel lodges we could find on short notice. I'm talking about places with one-star reviews and photos that look like they were taken with a flip phone, but we didn't care. We were just happy to be going.
Zagreb and Dubrovnik were incredible, even on our tight budget. The cities were packed with tourists, which made it easy to blend in and find cheap food and free activities. But Rijeka was different. It's a port city on the northern coast, and while it's technically on the water, it's not exactly what you'd call a beach destination. More importantly, it definitely wasn't a popular tourist spot. Walking around, P.S. and I were clearly some of the only foreigners in the entire town. That should have been our first red flag, but honestly, we kind of loved it. P.S. speaks decent Croatian, not fluent, but enough to get by, and I was picking up bits and pieces as we went. We spent our first day just wandering around talking to locals, soaking up the authentic Croatian experience we couldn't get in the touristy cities. P.S. is one of those people who can strike up a conversation with anyone, and I'm pretty talkative myself, so we were having a blast just chatting with shopkeepers and random people on the street. Everyone seemed friendly enough, though I did notice we were getting some lingering stares. Not the usual curious looks you'd expect tourists to get. These felt different, like more intense, but P.S. didn't seem bothered by it, so I figured I was just being paranoid.
On our second day, we decided to venture a little further from the city center to find somewhere authentic to eat lunch. P.S. had heard about this small restaurant area from someone at our Airbnb. Nothing fancy, just a local center that supposedly had amazing seafood restaurants. It was maybe a 15-minute walk from downtown through some residential streets that felt increasingly quiet as we got further from the main area. The restaurant itself was pretty nondescript, just a small building with a handful of tables inside and a simple handwritten menu taped to the window. But the moment we walked in, I knew P.S. had been right about the food. The smell was incredible, and you could tell everything was fresh and homemade. We sat down at a table near the window and ordered way too much food: grilled fish, some kind of seafood pasta, bread, and a bottle of local wine that cost about €3. I remember thinking we'd struck gold finding this place. The food was absolutely fantastic, better than anything we'd had in the touristy restaurants, and it was costing us practically nothing.
At one point, I noticed that while we'd been eating, a group of five men had come in and sat down just two tables away from us. They looked rough, the kind of guys you'd cross the street to avoid in any country. But they were just sitting there eating, not really paying attention to us, as far as I could tell. I was actually kind of surprised I hadn't noticed them earlier. I figured I had just been too distracted by how good the food was or too consumed in the conversation I was having with my girlfriend. I didn't think much of it and went back to eating. But I remember finding it kind of annoying how loudly they were talking. We were about halfway through our meal, just talking and enjoying ourselves when P.S. suddenly went quiet. She was looking past me toward the back of the restaurant, toward those guys, and I could tell something had shifted in her expression. Before I could ask her what was wrong, she leaned across the table and said very quietly that we needed to leave right now. I whispered back, asking what she was talking about, but she was already reaching for her purse. She said she was serious, and there was something in her voice that told me I'd better listen. I still didn't understand what was happening, but she's not the type to panic over nothing. She speaks the language. She knew the culture better than I did. If she said we needed to get out of there, there was probably a good reason. I pulled out a handful of kuna bills and threw them on the table, way more than our meal cost, and I followed her toward the door. The whole time I was expecting her to explain, but she just kept walking faster, practically pulling me along by the arm.
It wasn't until we were outside that I finally demanded to know what was going on. She looked back toward the restaurant and said she'd heard those men talking. They were discussing what they were going to do to us, to her specifically. Her voice was shaking a little, which scared me more than anything else. She said she heard them say they'd separate us first, and some guy named Luca would know what to do, whoever that was. She said some other things that I don't want to repeat, but the message was crystal clear: we needed to get back to the main part of the town ASAP. I told her they might have been joking, but she shook her head and said they weren't talking about things they wanted to do, but things they were going to do. She told me she got the impression that what they were discussing was routine as opposed to fantasy. I believed her. That's when I made the mistake of looking back toward the restaurant. All five men were standing outside now, and they were definitely watching us, not even trying to be subtle about it. The moment they saw me looking, they started walking in our direction. I grabbed her hand and told her they were following us. Without another word, we both started running. Not jogging, not walking fast, full-on sprinting back toward the city center. The problem was, we were a lot further from downtown than I'd realized, and the streets between us and safety were mostly empty residential blocks. I could hear footsteps behind us, and when I glanced back, all five men were chasing us now. They weren't even pretending anymore. They were just straight-up pursuing us through the streets. It was downright terrifying. P.S. was in better shape than me, but I somehow managed to keep up, probably because of adrenaline. We ran for what felt like forever, turning down random streets, hoping we were going in the right direction. Finally, after maybe 10 minutes of the most intense running of my life, we started seeing other people on the sidewalks and hearing traffic. The men stopped chasing us as soon as we hit the busy area. I looked back one more time and saw them just standing there, maybe two blocks behind us, watching us, but not coming any closer. It was like they knew they couldn't do whatever they'd been planning once there were witnesses around.
We were both completely out of breath and shaking from adrenaline. She was crying a little, though she was trying to hide it. I'd never seen her that scared before, and it made the whole thing feel even more real. We found a cafe in the main square and sat down, trying to process what had just happened. That's when this older Croatian guy at the table next to us, who must have overheard us talking in English, leaned over and asked if we were okay. When we explained what had happened, he just shook his head and called us idiots. Not in a mean way, but like he couldn't believe how naive we'd been. He said tourists shouldn't wander around alone in that part of the city, especially not obvious foreigners like us. Then P.S. described the restaurant we'd been to, and the guy's expression got even more serious. What he told us literally made me dizzy. He said we'd basically walked into a known hangout for local criminals, that the place was connected to some kind of organized crime group that operated in the area. He seemed genuinely concerned for us, like we'd narrowly avoided something really bad. I mentioned something about notifying local authorities, and he just laughed, but he didn't elaborate further. Then he paid for his coffee and promptly left the cafe.
P.S. and I didn't linger much longer. We got up after catching our breath and headed straight back to our Airbnb. The rest of our trip was basically ruined. We were too spooked to leave our room except to grab food from places right in the city center. We spent our last day just sitting inside watching TV on my laptop and counting down the hours until our flight. Looking back, I'm incredibly grateful that P.S. had the presence of mind to get us out of there when she did. If she hadn't understood what those men were saying, or if she'd hesitated even a little bit, I don't know what would have happened to us. It's one of those experiences that makes you realize how quickly a normal day can turn into something genuinely dangerous, especially when you're in an unfamiliar place where you don't fully understand the local dynamics. I honestly still feel pretty stupid for being so casual in a foreign country. I know that's one of the most dangerous things you can do, especially if you look nothing like a local. We didn't talk much about the incident after we got home, but I know it affected both of us. P.S. had always been fearless about traveling and exploring new places, but I think that day in Rijeka changed something for her because it certainly did for me.
[Music]