If he’d spent his entire career in the oilfield, Teocalli Exploration employee Richard Staton might not have thought twice about the SUV parked on a remote lease road in southwestern Kingfisher County.

“It’s not unusual for surveyors or landmen to be parked on lease roads and they usually drive those kinds of SUVs,” Staton’s boss Kurt Bollenbach said. “Those of us who have been doing this awhile probably would not thought anything of it.”

But Staton had only been on the job maintaining wellsites for Teocalli for about a month when he spotted the SUV about 11 a.m. Monday. For 14 years before that, he worked as a police officer.

“After all those years in law enforcement, seeing a newer model vehicle looking kind of abandoned in the middle of a lease road sends up some flags,” he said. “It didn’t look right to me.”

Staton phoned the tag into the Kingfisher County Sheriff’s Office, where a dispatcher traced it to an 80-year-old Richland Hills, Texas, man.

“Our first thought was that it was stolen, but then it came back as a missing persons case out of Texas,” Staton said.

“The man had been missing for a couple of days.”

The sheriff’s office responded quickly and organized a search party, with the help of the Omega Fire Department and some area farmers who volunteered to help.

The area, located 15 miles west of Okarche, is “like another world,” Bollenbach said. “It’s very remote and very rugged and very easy to get lost out there.”

“There are so many canyons and draws out there that you’re line of sight is really limited,” Staton said.

Riding the terrain in a grid pattern on ATVs, the search team discovered the man taking shelter under a shade tree – dehydrated, but conscious and alert, Staton said.

After he was checked out by emergency medical personnel and given liquids to rehydrate, the man was delivered to the sheriff’s office and his family was contacted.

Meanwhile, Staton and Bollenbach, who met him at the scene, volunteered to drive the man’s vehicle to the sheriff’s office, after first adding some gas to the nearly dry tank and topping it off at a station on the way back to town.

Staton gives all the credit to the team of rescuers who ultimately found the man and brought him to safety.

“I was just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time,” Staton said. “It’s the sheriff’s office, the Omega Fire Department and other volunteers who responded so quickly who deserve the credit.

“It’s just reasurring with all the craziness going on right now that there are people still out there doing their jobs and taking care of others.”

Bollenbach had a similar thought:

“We all have a tendency not to look beyond our own problems – especially now,” he said. “But this was a case where someone not only saw something but also did something.

“We’re really proud of Richard for his quick thinking in this situation.”