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Retiree, kayak reunited after highway tumble

Sam Wilson Daily Inter Lake | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 9 years, 3 months AGO
by Sam Wilson Daily Inter Lake
| June 29, 2016 7:30 AM

Driving south out of Kalispell Sunday evening, Nancy Robison’s heart dropped when she realized her $450 retirement present had fallen from the bed of her truck — just 20 minutes after she bought the kayak.

“Another car came over beside us and was waving,” she said Monday. “My husband looked in the rear-view mirror and said, ‘Oh my gosh, the kayak is gone.’”

They were headed to Flathead Lake to take her new, ocean-blue sit-on-top Emotion kayak for its maiden voyage. Robison just retired from Columbia Falls High School this month after 34 years at the front desk of Columbia Falls schools.

They doubled back up U.S. 93 and saw a man stopped along the highway, quickly throwing the vessel into his truck.

“I thought, ‘Oh no, he just got himself a new kayak,’” she said.

Her husband gave chase, both trucks racing down the highway, until Robison lost sight of the blue pickup just before Somers and her husband pulled off at a gas station.

“We figured he could have turned off on any side road, and we weren’t doing anybody any good speeding down the road,” Robison said. “We figured we had lost it and we would never see it again. We wouldn’t be able to afford another one right away.”

That was until Monday afternoon, when she got a call from Chad, who was not actually a boat thief but instead a kayak rescuer. He had tracked down her number through the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office.

As it turned out, Chad had picked up the errant kayak and had been trying to chase them down to return the kayak, not realizing he was gradually pulling farther away from them.

While it was a remarkable turn of luck, Robison said she’s mostly thankful no one was hurt when the boat dropped onto the busy highway. To top it off, the kayak escaped with no more than some minor scuffing on the seat and handles.

She said she was planning to take the kayak out for its delayed inaugural trip Monday evening — hopefully with fewer complications the second time around.

“We’ve had a lot of good Samaritans in our life. This is just the icing,” Robison said. “There’s great people in the Flathead.”


Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.

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