LAKE LURE, N.C. ( WJZY ) – When Jordan Seidhom woke up Saturday morning, he saw a Facebook post that tens of thousands of people were commenting on and sharing.
A family was stranded on a mountain in Banner Elk, North Carolina. They had run out of water a day earlier and had just enough food to last less than two days.
Seidhom, the former head of the Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office narcotics unit, knows a thing or two about finding people. He researched the mountain chain where the family was located and found a place to land using his mapping software.
He loaded bottled water and food into his helicopter and headed toward Banner Elk.
“I thought, I have a helicopter, maybe I can help,” Seidhom told Nexstar’s WJZY
His son, a high school junior, went along. Both are volunteer members of the Sandhills Volunteer Fire Department in Pageland, South Carolina. Seidhom is a Class 1 certified law enforcement officer and a pilot with nearly 1,400 flight hours.
He first contacted the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport’s Air Traffic Control tower to get clearance to fly over the airport. Seidhom said he got the clearance and was allowed to fly over the airport, which is a direct shot to the gap in the mountains he needed to get through to Lake Lure.