[at-l] Telemarketer Saves Hiker

[jbkramer@afn.org (Bryan Kramer)]

I heard this on the radio but my first thought was: "How many cel towers
are there in the Andes? Darn few is my guess" They even identified the
phone company as Bell South. I smell a hoax myself.

Bryan

> Out of nowhere, a phone company solicitor is calling on his 
> cell phone, asking if he would like to buy more time. 
> 
> "We called him to remind him that his cell phone was out of 
> minutes. He said it was the work of an angel, because he was 
> lost in the (Andes)," said Maria del Pilar Basto, the Bell 
> South operator who called Leonardo. 
> 
> Basto called for help, and she and other operators kept 
> ringing Leonardo to keep him awake and help ward off 
> hypothermia. He was able to keep talking to her until rescue 
> teams arrived seven hours later -- with the frigid 
> temperatures acting as a natural recharger for his cell phone 
> batteries. 
> 
> "I remembered that when I was a boy I put batteries in the 
> freezer," Diaz said in a newspaper interview describing his 
> late May adventure. "So, I took off (the dead) battery and 
> flung it into the snow. After half an hour, it was working again." 
> 
> Diaz was not answering his cell phone on Thursday.