We all have stories: famous people we have met, strange turns in life we didn’t expect, memorable encounters (purposeful and accidental).

My son survived the mass shooting in Las Vegas; in the same city some 20 years prior, a friend of his waiting in line for a concert tossed her last few quarters into a slot machine – winning a jackpot large enough to purchase a new home in Davis County. A client of mine accepted a ride from a stranger driving a yellow Volkswagen; later, sexually assaulted and beaten, she remained in a self-imposed “dark period” before hearing of another girl who escaped Ted Bundy’s car.

From his residence in Bountiful, Gordy can view the majestic mountains looming up in the east. Gordy has had a brush with mountains and, during a rescue, a meeting with a man who figured in national news.  

A finance executive, Gordy was a “spotter” on a rescue airplane in 1971 searching for remains of a Piper jet carrying his wife’s cousin traveling from Phoenix to Salt Lake. The Piper never made it – and Gordy almost didn’t either. His plane smashed into the top of Mt. Nebo where in heavy snow and bitter cold, Gordy was paralyzed from the neck down. A National Guard pilot noticed a flare, and medics dropped 20 feet to the mountain, then tunneled through 12 feet of powder to rescue Gordy.

He would not get out of his hospital bed for four months. He was placed in a full-body cast, would not return to work for two years, and still suffers from the nerve damage. But that’s only part of the story.

One of the helicopter pilots in the rescue, Floyd McCoy, Jr., was an Army pilot who served two tours of duty in the Vietnam War, one as a Green Beret, another as a demolition expert. He told friends he wanted to become a Utah Highway Patrol trooper.

His life trajectory changed less than a year after Gordy’s rescue when McCoy boarded a United Airlines plane in Denver, brandished a paperweight (which looked like a hand grenade) and an unloaded pistol, and demanded four parachutes and $500,000. He received the ransom when the plane landed in San Francisco. He then ordered the pilot back to the sky where he bailed out near Provo. He left behind his handwritten hijacking notes and fingerprints on a magazine he was reading. 

Arrested two days later (and still possessing some of the ransom cash), he was sentenced to 45 years imprisonment. Several years later he escaped, was cornered in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and was killed in a shoot-out with FBI agents.

Only three months before, a similar hijacking had been carried out by a man who gave the name of Dan Cooper (D.B. Cooper). The escapade was sensationalized in print and song; a club in Salt Lake carried his name; his daring-do made him a legendary man of mystery. 

Along with several FBI agents and former Davis County Sheriff Harry Jones, Gordy was convinced that the helicopter pilot who saved him on Mt. Nebo was the real D.B. Cooper. Others are not convinced, noting that all but 290 of the 10,000 bills were ever found – or spent.

Maybe D.B. Cooper died parachuting into the bristly mountains in the Northwest. Then again, maybe Gordy’s helicopter pilot was the legendary Cooper who was caught on this second hijack attempt. Investigators say a tie clip was identical on the suspect(s) in both cases.

Who knows? As John Lennon famously said, “Humans make plans for life and God laughs.”

Bryan Gray, a longtime Davis County resident, is a former school teacher and has been a columnist for more than 26 years in newspapers along the Wasatch Front.