‘That girl has a will to live.’ Rescuers describe finding missing Jamie Tull

Robert Carpenter, Lynn Garber and Mario Bianchi met before sunrise on Friday at the place where Jamie Tull crashed her car weeks ago.

It was the 17th day the 33-year-old former kindergarten teacher had been missing. Her parents, Jim and Sandy devenport, deployed 200 volunteers to search for her, set up a website, www.helpfindjamie.com, and offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to her safe return.

Credible leads to Tull’s whereabouts were drying up. At this point, search teams were preparing to dial back their efforts and let Jamie resurface on her own, Carpenter said. But, as fathers, the three men knew they’d never quit looking if they were in the devenports’ situation.

Multiple “Missing” posters depicting a smiling Tull, wearing sunglasses and a hat with the words “God is good all the time,” were stapled to the telephone poles and stop signs near Childs Avenue and Cunningham Road, not far from where Tull’s car was found.

Carpenter, who works for Tull’s father, arranged earlier in the week for a team of search dogs to search the area, but it fell through.

Nevertheless, he – along with Garber, a family friend, and Bianchi, the ranch manager of the pasture where Jamie went missing – walked a path along the property line near the crash site.

About a quarter-mile down the path, Bianchi noticed an unusual figure near the fence. When the three men got close, they saw it was Tull with her knees in the air. She had been wandering in the pasture all night and had so little energy and strength left she couldn’t make it over a barbed wire fence, Garber said.

“My first reaction was that she might not be alive, and then all of a sudden she started talking,” Bianchi said. “It’s like, oh my God.”

“When we came upon Jamie, your mind begins saying ‘That can’t be her. That just can’t be her,’” Carpenter said.

When Tull saw the men, she had a simple message for them: “I’m alive.”

She was lucid enough to communicate that she had no broken bones and sought shelter near a water tank.

“She said that she had been praying the whole time, she was so happy that somebody had found her,” Garber said.

The three men jumped into action, retrieving water from the Jeep they drove down the bumpy pasture path and dialing 911. Tull was badly sunburned from triple-digit temperatures and severely dehydrated.

“That girl has a will to live,” Carpenter said. “Anyone who can survive out here for 17 days is an amazing gal, to me.”

“The reality is, had she been in the field another 20 feet, we would’ve never found her,” Carpenter said. “This is really, to me and everybody else who was out here this morning, a miracle. This is truly a miracle.”

Sheriff Vern Warnke said when first responders arrived on scene, Tull requested food and water but asked for law enforcement and paramedics to leave. “She didn’t want to be found,” he said. “It was very evident she wasn’t looking for help.”

Warnke said search teams, including bloodhounds, volunteers on foot, and a helicopter in the air, couldn’t find Tull because she avoided them and was wandering around so much. Tull was found about a mile from Cunningham Road and at least two ranch houses.

But, the three men who found her said she was happy to be found and “praising the Lord.”

First responders immediately began treating Tull in an ambulance. Law enforcement searched the area and found her cellphone but were still searching for her purse.

Garber and Carpenter knew Tull as a child and described her as a bubbly, vivacious, sweet, active and happy girl who loved Jesus.

“We look forward to that being the case again,” Carpenter said.

Tull is recovering in the burn unit at Fresno’s Community Regional Medical Center, Warnke said.

“We believe in Jesus Christ. We’re followers of Jesus Christ,” Carpenter said. “The reality is ... we’re not heroes. In God’s sovereignty, from my perspective, (God) planned this day a long time ago. He knew that we would be here, and she would be there, and that we were the people chosen to be the ones that found her.”

This story was originally published August 4, 2017 at 5:23 PM with the headline "‘That girl has a will to live.’ Rescuers describe finding missing Jamie Tull."