A man who told rescuers that he has been searching for a wishing well was pulled from a Napa ventilation shaft Tuesday, naked, drunk, and at the literal end of his rope.
According to the Napa Police Department, 48-year-old Robert Turbidy was rescued from the ventilation shaft above a TOGO's sandwich shop and a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store at around 8:40 a.m. Tuesday.
Bruce Schmitz, a construction worker who was scheduled to do repairs to the building Tuesday, tells NBC Bay Area that when he arrived at the job site yesterday, he heard a faint voice crying "Help me, please. Help me."
Approaching a TOGO's staffer, he said "Do you have someone in the bathroom, playing games, saying, 'Help me! Help me!'" he asked. "It's not very funny." The staffer, it turns out, had heard the same plea. From NBC:
"I start to ask, 'Hey, is there someone in there?'" Schmitz said."Yes, I'm in here," the man replied. "I was looking for a wishing well."
Schmitz replied: "What? How did you get in there?"
The man responded: "What's it matter? I didn't find it."
He then added, "I was drunk last night," to which Schmitz said, "OK, we got that figured out!"
The Chron reports that Turbidy "allegedly climbed on the roof of the shop and entered an access door where he lowered himself into an 18-inch diameter crawl space using a makeshift rope, police said. At some point, the rope broke and he became wedged in the fetal position for about eight hours."
“I have no clue where his clothes are, how he lost them,” Napa City Fire Department division chief of operations John Callanan told the Chron.
"It is very unusual for us to have this sort of rescue," Napa Fire Department Battalion Chief Charlie Rhodes told NBC, "noting that it was unclear whether the man 'fell straight down or if he had braced himself' as he plummeted 30 feet down the vent."
Rescuers had to break away an exterior wall to free Turbidy, who was then was transported to Queen of the Valley Medical Center for treatment of minor injuries. He was then booked into Napa County Jail on for probation violations and suspicion of burglary.
“I don’t know if the gentleman was attempting to burglarize the building or looking for a place to sleep,” Callanan told the Chron. “It’s been a little strange up here lately in Napa.”