Brothers found;
announced at vigil

PORTAGE, Mich. (WOOD) - Two brothers who were missing while on a hunting trip in Colorado have been found safe.

Mike Boso, 43, of Kalamazoo and his brother, Mark, 32, of Ashland, Kentucky left from Kalamazoo on Oct. 30 and arrived in Meeker, Colorado the next morning. Their families then lost contact with them sometime around Halloween.

The men were supposed to return to Kalamazoo on Nov. 7.

At the end of an hour-long special service Tuesday night, the prayers at Berean Baptist Church in Portage were answered.

"Even if you know this very night they'd be coming down off the mountain, and it just seems like it was answered right away. I never had a prayer answered that quick before," said Jonathan Rock, a member of the congregation at the church.

24 Hour News 8 was there when it was announced that the men have been found safe. The congregation then erupted with cheers.

The news of the men's recovery began around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday when Mike's wife, Kim, and their four daughters received the phone call at home that they and the community have been waiting for.

It was Mike on the other end of the line.

"I looked down at the number, I looked down at the phone, and it was his number, and I didn't even know what to do. And so I just started crying, I'm sure. And he said, 'I'm down off the mountain,'" Kim Boso told 24 Hour News 8.

"My stomach was bumping, it wouldn't stop. And then my heart like froze. I froze," said one of their daughters, Emily.

Kim said Mike and Mark were snowed in atop a mountain and had been shoveling out since Nov. 5. They then made their way down the mountain to safety and called home.

Kim said Mike was asking for only one thing.

"He said, 'I'm getting a hot meal and a hot shower.'"

For Kim, her next phone call came naturally.

"We knew that they were at the church praying and we just needed to let everybody know that that prayer was answered, and he was coming home," she said.

So she called the church where the vigil was being held. Those at the service held the phone to the microphone and let Kim tell the congregation the good news.

Kim said her husband, who works at Pfizer, and brother-in-law have gone out west at least the past five years. She said they are avid outdoorsmen, which she says definitely helped them survive.