Health & Fitness
Robbed! - Pioneer Trek #6
This young man almost went hungry along with his family during the trek after getting robbed.
This post comes from Michael Hagues, a resident of Santee and sophomore at West Hills High School.
I am Michael Hagues and I was able to have the privilege to participate in the pioneer trek. I am 16 years old and am a sophomore at West Hills High School. When we arrived at the Ocotillo desert I was first assigned to a family made up of a ma and pa and other youth around my age. I was assigned to be in the Stoddard family with six other youth.
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We were given a hand cart and were told to put our belongings in the hand cart. We each took turns pulling the hand cart on a dirt trail which was mainly soft sand. This made pulling the hand cart difficult and having to wear pioneer clothes in the hot sun made it even more challenging. We pulled 5 miles the first day and 8 miles the second day.
Along the trail we encountered several stop points where we would have an experience’s to make the re-enactment more realistic. On the first day my family was the last to get onto the trail and about 15 minutes into the trip my family was robbed by a couple of thieves. We were just pulling along and two thieves jumped out of nowhere and threatened to stab us, with the knife’s they had out, if we didn’t give up our lunches. We had no choice but to give up our lunches.
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So, we handed over our food to the thieves and continued with our journey. We had faith that everything would turn out o.k. even though our food was gone. After another 15 minutes of walking we approached a camp where we met a married couple and their baby. They told us that as the other families had passed by, they asked them for an item of their lunches’ because they heard news that we had been robbed and wanted to help. We were then given a huge pile of food; they had collected, and ended up with more food than we had before.
This experience made the trip very memorable as well as all of the others. I was grateful that I was able to go even though it was physically challenging I still had a wonderful experience. I would recommend to anyone that they should participate in a pioneer trek if they were given the opportunity because it strengthened me physically and spiritually.
