America's unique, high-pressured, family holiday of cooking, hosting, serving, eating and thanks-giving was proceeding smoothly at the home of Patrick and Tina Cavanaugh last Thursday.
The exception was the gravy which her father, Edward Lannon, offered to make and botched.
But at the Cavanaughs' ranch home, nestled on a steep incline above Concord Street in West Gloucester, in an isolated, rough-hewn enclave, normal time stretched.
The turkey for the Cavanaughs' table of 16 family members went into the oven at 4:30 a.m.
Eleven hours later, Tina, a petite 42, became aggravated in a conversation with brother Scott, and excused herself from the table.
"I decided to take a walk to clear my head, I was overwhelmed," she said yesterday during an hour-long interview she and Patrick gave the Times.
They declined to discuss the nature of the upsetting conversation with Scott, except to confirm that it was not a fight and he was expressing concern for his sister.
The weather was balmy when Tina left, wearing a tank top, a long-sleeved shirt, jeans and slip-on shoes.
She didn't bother to take a coat because she said she didn't intend to remain outside for too long — certainly not for 24 hours, spent alone in deep woods except for coyotes, who terrorized her with their cries and came so close she said she could see the reds of their eyes. And most of the time, it was spent in driving rains that began soon after she left and stayed so strong the experience was akin to being in water of 40 some degrees — cold enough to bring on hypothermia.
According to charts made for mariners, a person of average size will become unconscious in 30 to 60 minutes of immersion in water, with a temperature of between 40 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and will die within one to three hours.
At just under 5-feet tall and 100 pounds, Tina Cavanaugh could be expected to fare less well than average.
When she did not return in short order, the family searched the neighborhood — a rocky, steep, unlit environment broken up only by three narrow pieces of pavement that loop and reconnect in ways a stranger would find disorienting — until 7 p.m.
Then, the Cavanaugh family called the police.
There was little that could be done in the dark. But at rollcall Friday morning, police Lt. Joseph Aiello, then the commanding officer, said he realized "we only have the daylight hours to find her."
There was still no clue as to where into the Thanksgiving gloaming — sunset was at 4:11, just minutes after she walked out of her houseful of family guests — Tina had vanished the previous day.
So Aiello, assisted by Detective Steve Mizzoni and a growing cadre of about 50 volunteers from the Coast Guard, the Environmental Police, the Fire Department, and the state police, began banging on the few front doors in the neighborhood as well as looking into all forms of shelter, such as sheds and boats hauled up for the winter.
"It was relatively clear that, because of the terrain and her physical ability — she is such a small thing — it was likely that she was not far away," said Aiello. "It was imperative to find her before sunset. We were absolutely sure she would not be able to survive another night.
"We went into the woods shortly after 1 p.m.," Aiello said. He explained that he delayed that move until he had enough personnel to conduct a thorough dragnet, yet not allow any of the searchers to become separated and lost.
There may be no more difficult or isolated terrain in Gloucester.
If Cavanaugh had gone off her street, Becker Lane, to the north or south of Thompson Street she could have been lost in swamp and near mountainous conditions.
The name of the street off Becker Lane is White's Mountain Road. It bends and curves until it just ends.
South of Thompson Street, an unpaved, mile-long walking patch and cut-through from Concord to Bray Street farther along to Essex, is mile-wide wilderness bordered by Bray, Fernald Street and Route 128.
"We pulled up a 'topo' map of the area," Aiello said. "The only place we hadn't searched was deep woods. We sent two teams in not more than 1,500 feet from the road. We cannot overstate the help of the neighbors."
Neither the Coast Guard nor the state police were willing to bring in their helicopters Friday afternoon due to the low ceiling, rain and wind.
"If the weather was better," Aiello said, "the infrared cameras on both would have identified her almost immediately."
After she left the house Thursday, Tina Cavanaugh said she "went up a path and got lost."
"It got dark quicker than I thought," she said. "I got nervous and I got further in. The darker it got, the scarier it was. I heard coyotes," she said. Many in the neighborhood say coyotes are fixtures just beyond sight, within hearing range.
"I even saw the reds of their eyes — you can see their eyes at night," she said. "They seemed to surround me."
In the dark, Tina said she "slipped and fell on a big rock. My shoes slipped off — I lost them in the muck, but I had socks. I sat there all night, and when the light came up, I didn't recognize anything.
"My legs didn't work, they were purple; I thought my toes were going to fall off."
Disoriented and immobilized, she sat there, considering her pathetic end.
"I really thought I wasn't going to get out of here," she said. "I thought I was going to die here."
When she got up and tried to walk, "I fell over," she said.
Late in the day, Tina said she heard a helicopter. "I pulled myself up (on) a rock, but I didn't think it could see me."
Then, she said, she "saw the guys before they saw me."
The "guys" were Billy Aubrey, Darin Strong and a third person, whose identity is unknown. Aubrey and Strong are longtime friends with Patrick Cavanaugh, dating to their West Parish Elementary School days roughly 30 years earlier. Independently, each had gone looking for Tina as daylight slimmed on Friday.
"You could sense their fear as night came," Patrick said. He was in the command center with Aiello.
The command center at the start of Friday was in the Cavanaughs' two-car garage. But as the state police added their assets to the search and rescue effort, Lt. Scott White brought in a mobile command center which was parked in front of the West Parish school, leaving room for the many marked and unmarked cars, and the mobile media vans of the television stations from Boston to arc their lights from along the west side of the school.
The school itself was used as a field barracks, with the Red Cross providing hot food and coffee.
As he stood with Aiello, Patrick Cavanaugh, 46, a vice president of Calloway Testing Laboratory, a Woburn company that does drug testing for substance abuse and pain care management, said he heard over the police radio that they'd "'found a female body.'"
"'That's not good,'" he recalls thinking. "Then they radioed for a medevac."
But much against the odds, Tina was "alive and alert," a phrase that came from behind the smile on the face of police Chief Michael Lane as he emerged from the state police command center just after dark and reported the good news to Mayor Carolyn Kirk, who had driven to West Parish.
Another friend, Sean Cranston, heard the chatter on the scanner and set off in his ATV for the location, about three quarters of a mile from Thompson Street, in deep woods cut by mountain bike and walking trails where Aubrey, Strong and the third civilian rescuer had come upon Tina Cavanaugh.
"They took turns carrying me. I was freezing," she said. "I put my arms in my shirt to keep my body warm," she said.
The rescuers took turns carrying her — her light weight an asset — until they were met by Cranston's ATV. Police arrived and began wrapping her and began IVs to raise her body temperature.
She was taken by ambulance to Addison Gilbert Hospital where members of her family, except the couple's older son James, 15, waited for her. James remained at home to answer the phone.
She was released from hospital Sunday night, and in the living room yesterday, as she sat with Patrick to recount the ordeal for the Times, seemed none the worse for wear.
The couple were married, divorced once, and remarried.
Their older son, James is from the first marriage; Aiden, 5, is from the second marriage.
The couple were asked how the experience affected them.
"I definitely look at life and people around me in a different way," said Patrick. "You don't realize how deep love is until its gone."
"I'm overwhelmed," said Tina, tears welling up. "Three people walked for hours to find me. It's amazing."
Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or via e-mail at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com
