Copyright c 1995, Iowa State Daily

Caged in a box with hope as his only blanket, Thomas Hargrove lived nearly a year in hell.

Hargrove, who earned a master’s degree in technical journalism from ISU in 1968 and a doctorate in agriculture education in 1977, was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist Guerrilla group, on Sept. 23, 1994.

He was released 11 months later on Aug. 22, after a second ransom was paid. Hargrove, who then lived in Cali, Colombia, was so malnourished at the time of his release that his hair had turned orange.

But those closest to him were just happy he was alive.

“It was tremendous,” said Dick Disney, a former ISU journalism professor and friend of Hargrove’s. “It was a great sense of real joy to know he was released.”

Disney — who Hargrove, then the agricultural editor, recruited to work at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines — said news of Hargrove’s survival didn’t come as a big surprise.

“If anybody was going to last through what he went through, it was going to be him,” he said.

Hargrove — held for a time in an extinct volcano in the northern Andes Mountains — was working with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) to improve the technology of Colombia’s poorest farmers when he was abducted. He is now recuperating at his new home in Granbury, Texas, with his wife, Susan and their two sons. The experience, he says, “has obviously changed our lives.”

Hargrove, though busy with his upcoming book, Long Walk to Freedom, took an hour earlier this week to talk with the Iowa State Daily. His plight, often horrific and certainly emotional, is detailed below.

Daily: First of all, I suppose congratulations are in order for surviving your ordeal. Can you give me little bit of background?

Hargrove: It was pretty hard on me, but I’d also like to point out that it was a lot tougher, in many ways, on my family than it was on me.

Daily: How so?

Hargrove: They really had to make some tough decisions; I had to survive. It wasn’t always easy to survive, but survival is about the most basic instinct there is known to human kind. And I never had to make any decision, that if it was the wrong decision, it would kill anyone but me. But my wife, my brother and my family who ran that part of the show had to make a lot of decisions, that if they were the wrong decisions, they would kill me.

Daily: How did you handle knowing that?

Hargrove: I didn’t have any knowledge. I had nothing but hope. As a matter of fact, I didn’t receive any news during the entire 11 full months. I never received a letter, or any kind of communication from my family, from anyone. I was allowed to write letters, only in Spanish, that had to be censored by the commandant, that would go out when supplies came in by mule train about every 20, 21, 22 days.

I wrote to my family at every chance until we were cut off by the Colombian Army. From June through August, we never even got supplies. There were no more mule trains. I never knew until I was out that they never mailed any of the letters. I wrote lots of letters to old friends and so forth, but they were all thrown away.

Nobody ever received any kind of communication from me, except for my family in a year received three or four letters that I was forced to write.

Daily: Can you describe how you were abducted and what transpired that day?

Hargrove: While I was driving to work … I was not targeted; I was late for work that day and I drove into a road block set up by the Guerrilla, who had come down from the mountains. When they saw that I was a ‘gringo,’ [an American] they took me and the next thing I knew I was in the back of a stolen pickup and headed for the mountains, and I didn’t come down for a year.

Daily: What were you thoughts?

Hargrove: I still thought it was the Colombian Army until I saw people wearing ski masks; when I saw those ski masks I knew that it was Guerrilla. Then when I was thrown in the back of the pickup, I knew I was being kidnapped, but I felt that I would probably be turned loose … that if the Communist Guerrilla are really fighting for the rights of the poor and the hungry and so forth, well, that’s what we do; that’s what I’m there for. I really thought it would be counter-productive to kidnap someone like me, and that I would probably be turned loose. But I wasn’t.

Daily: How were you treated? What were some of the conditions like?

Hargrove: I wasn’t treated very well. I weighed close to 180 when I was kidnapped, and I … a week after I was free and started eating — and I did start eating a lot — I weighed 131 pounds.

Daily: And the conditions?

Hargrove: I was alone all of the time. I was never around another prisoner. I was never around anyone except Guerrilla for the entire year. I spent 2 1/2 months either locked in a little cell — about 6-foot long by 6-foot high by 3 1/2-foot wide. Dark. Or, when I was out of that, on a 15-foot chain.

Daily: What was the hardest part?

Hargrove: Being alone all the time. Think yourself: What’s the longest time you’ve ever spent without having a friend, or anyone that you could talk to or relate to in any way … anyone that you could trust at all?

Daily: I can’t imagine more than a day or two.

Hargrove: Me too. But in this case, it was like 11 months. During the time, I never spoke, talked, read or anything in English. Everything was in Spanish. I had virtually nothing to read, because when you’re held around by illiterates, that’s not a good place to look for things to read. The loneliness, the boredom and the uncertainty were, I suppose, the worst things of all.

I always think, if I were only in prison, and I knew at the end of 2 1/2 years I would be out, then I could be marking off time, but I didn’t know if I would ever be out. One of the things that frightened me the most was that I might be held for years like that.

Daily: What were your captors like?

Hargrove: Let me say something about the Guerrilla that might be of interest to university students. I was talking with a professor at the University of California-Berkley a couple days ago and she said something about these people.

I said: ‘Who do you think these people were anyway?’

She said: ‘I would assume that they were disenchanted liberals who had dropped out from the university.’

I said: ‘Baby, you got it so wrong.’

During the year, I met one person with a 10th-grade education. They considered her like an Einstein. Other than that, I never met anyone with more than a fourth-grade education. A second-grade education was about the norm.

I was seldom around people that I felt were even of average intelligence, and I am not confusing education and intelligence. A lot of these people had second-grade educations, but it wasn’t as though they were deprived. A lot of them couldn’t have gone past a second-grade education anyway. They didn’t have enough upstairs.

Daily: With a doctoral degree…

Hargrove: From Iowa State, no less. You’re really smart then.

Daily: Have you been around academia your whole life?

Hargrove: Well, this was an unusually uneducated group of people. That’s one thing that was rather frightening about the whole thing. I always felt like I was with people who didn’t really understand the implications of what all was going on, and perhaps implications of their potential actions.

Daily: Were you ever told why, exactly, you were abducted?

Hargrove: Sure. Because I was a ‘gringo’ to be held for ransom. No one ever tried to sell me on Marxist/Leninist philosophy, nothing like that. It was straight money. That’s why I was kidnapped. Anyone who thinks that these people have any sense of idealism, or that they’re concerned about the poor, that’s bullshit.

I call them Guerrilla, but I really don’t like that too much. It’s sort of like saying a soldier. I’ve been a soldier, and I have a respect for soldiers, at least some soldiers. I had no respect for these people. They were criminals is what they were.

Daily: I understand you were allowed to keep a diary. Is there any particular passage you remember thinking at the time would be significant if or when you were released?

Hargrove: Here’s one. This would be on 22 October.

I wrote: ‘What a day. I’m sitting in my tent like so many days in the past, except Juco’s [the commandant] pack sits at my feet. So convenient for storing things, and I’m having a drink from Juco’s last bottle of brandy, the one he opened and drank from just before he blew himself away.

Now Juco’s dead, and his death is ultimately because of me, his prisoner, who’s still alive, and I have his pack, his pen, his brandy. An absurdly symbolic thought has flown through my mind again and again the past few days — I should save the last drink of Juco’s last bottle of brandy, and as I leave this Valley of Death, I should somehow make my way back to his shallow grave and pour him that last drink. Is that thought wrong? I don’t think so. I wonder which end of the grave they placed his head.’

People played rough up there.

Daily: Wow. So Juco committed suicide?

Hargrove: He went crazy up in the mountains. He and his troops got drunk and stoned on ‘basuco’ [rudimentary cocaine]. One of the Guerrilla accidentally shot one of the cows as he was spraying the hillside with his Israeli-made automatic rifle. This was a very bad thing that the troops had gotten stoned and drunk under Juco’s command and killed a cow, and I think Juco decided that this was going to be a great humiliation for him.

He would probably lose his command over it, and he went insane and started shooting everywhere … they were all shooting everywhere all night long before they shot the cow.

In the end, I went in at noon to get my food — this was before I was chained — and Juco had apparently decided that he was in real bad trouble and it was all because of me, because if it weren’t for me he wouldn’t be there in the mountains. I was peeling a piece of onion and Juco came up behind me and stuck the muzzle of his [rifle] behind my head and then he was going to execute me … and instead, at the last minute, he raised the muzzle of his rifle and shot through the ceiling of the hut we were in instead.

A couple of hours later he stuck the muzzle of his [rifle] under his chin, put it on full automatic, pressed the trigger with his thumb and it blew off three rounds on full automatic and blew the top of his head all over the mountain.

I was about 30 feet away. I’d left actually to go get a machete to help clean the cow with, and I think he might have killed me instead because he already almost had. When he was gone, the chain of command sort of broke down. No one knew what to do, so they all decided to leave that camp and go down the mountain to another camp.

As we left, they put his [Juco’s] things on his bunk in this little mud hut — no one was watching — and among it was backpack, a brand new ball-point pen, cold medicine and a bottle of brandy. No one was looking.

See, you learn to be a thief when you’re a prisoner. So I grabbed the bottle of brandy and stuck it in the front of my trousers. No one noticed because it was all a thing of hysteria.

As we left the valley, we stopped and looked back at the dead cow lying and there was dead Juco lying beside the cow. I said something like, ‘Goodbye to [the Valley of Death].’ From then on, that camp became known as the Valley of Death. I named all the valleys, all the camps. They started liking the names I would give them.

As we were walking down I was talking to two of the girls, and they told me that the last thing that Juco did while I went to get the machete … what he did was he reached in his [coat] and pulled out this bottle of brandy, opened it, took a drink of brandy and then stuck the muzzle under his chin and blew himself away. Then I realized: I stole that bottle of brandy, which was the last thing that he ever did.

I didn’t think we would come back, but then we did come back and buried Juco. I didn’t have any covers. They took all my covers to wrap his corpse in. It really pissed me off because it was cold up there and he didn’t need those covers. He was dead. I was alive.

I made a vow that before I was free I was going to pour the last of that brandy on his grave, but not in a friendship type thing, in sort of a contempt … an ‘I’m alive and you’re dead.’

On Thanksgiving evening I said, ‘You’re vengeance isn’t doing you much good. You’re still not free; maybe you ought to try a little forgiving.’

Daily: You said this to?

Hargrove: To me. I wound up having the last drink of brandy on Thanksgiving evening, because I felt that maybe my wife would be at friends house having Thanksgiving dinner that night. It’s just as good, because when we finally did leave the Valley of Death, I was in chains and couldn’t have gone and poured the brandy on Juco’s grave anyway.

Daily: That’s a powerful story.

Hargrove: You tell this, and you tell little stories like that, but most of it was just sitting there with nothing to do. If you asked me right now how long I was up there, I might tell you I was up there three or four months, instead of a year. If you don’t do anything day after day, well one day is just like the other day and there’s nothing to remember.

Daily: What did you do from day to day? How did you cope with not having access to any kind of stimuli?

Hargrove: I don’t know. I was in Vietnam, and I often said that if I were ever captured that I couldn’t have taken it, that one of the worst things that could happen to me would to be a prisoner, locked away without anything to read. I always thought that I wouldn’t be able to survive something like that, but that’s exactly what happened, and I did.

You think about everything you’ve ever done, everybody you’ve ever known, every good thing you’ve ever done, and unfortunately, every bad thing you’ve ever done, every friend you’ve ever had. At times I made lists of every song I could remember. I would try to sing to myself in the evenings, but only in the evenings so that was something to do to look forward to. Every time I could think of another song I could remember the words to, I wrote down the title.

Daily: When did you know you were going to be released?

Hargrove: I had been told six times that I was going to be released, so I couldn’t let myself think I was going to be released. They gave me [what was equal to $12] and in less than an hour we were marching out. When we were marching out it wasn’t over, because there was always a good chance at getting shot by the Colombian Army. Anybody on the ground was a bad guy in these areas.

Daily: When were you let go?

Hargrove: [The Guerrilla] met some Indians on the trail and came back and told me they were going to let me go right there because there was a chance if they continued forward of running into Colombian Army. So each one shook hands with me and I walked on. I stopped and I wrote: ’10:47 a.m. 22 August, 1995; I’m free at last.’

They told me to keep going ahead on the trail and eventually I’d hit a road and once I got to the road to turn right and eventually I would find people and perhaps someone could lend me horse or a mule or something I could ride down to about 12 hours or so where there was a village. So I started walking. I was afraid of getting lost in the mountains and freezing to death. They took all my extra blankets, everything. I was just wearing a couple of shirts, but I didn’t have any kind of warm clothing at all.

I kept going and finally I hit a road, but I marched on that road for about six, seven hours and never saw a car, truck or anything. I finally met an Indian … and this Indian marched with me and guided me through the mountains as a shortcut rather than follow the road. He walked with me for three hours; then he had to walk back to where he came from.

We shook hands. We talked most of the time, and I told him my story … I hadn’t talked to anyone for a year. I said: ‘Is my story boring you?’

He said it was very interesting, but, ‘It makes me very sad that these things happen to you in my country and you were held in my country.’

Daily: Do you know about how long you walked?

Hargrove: Sure. At about 4:55 p.m. I finally came to a little hut on the road and there was a young, 20-year-old, Indian potato farmer. He had a motorbike. I told him who I was and that I needed help. He gave me a dish of rice and pastas. And then he said, ‘Get on. I’ll take you to [the village].’

Finally, when were getting into this village, a couple of men were standing in front of a [bar] and I went and asked if they knew where I could hire a car or something, and they pointed to a jeep in front of a store that was being loaded with stacks of coffee. I went up and I told the guy … I was looking for a way to hire a car, but I wasn’t sure I had enough money, but once we got to Cali, where I lived, my family or my friends would have money. I said I’d been kidnapped and I was up in the mountains.

The guy said: ‘Do you work for CIAT?’

I said: ‘How did you know?’

And the guy said: ‘I’ve read about it in the papers and I’ve seen you on television.’

And then an Indian woman comes up and she says: ‘Are you Dr. Thomas Hargrove?’ (Spoken with a Spanish accent.)

No one can pronounce my family name. I said yes and the next thing I know, she yells and I’m surrounded by people, by Indians, who all knew who I was.

I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know that anyone knew who I was. I felt the whole world had forgotten me. The guy put me in his jeep and drove me an hour and a half to another town, where his brother-in-law had a car. He took me to his house first and his family all came out.

He said: ‘Do you want anything?’

I said: ‘How about a Coca-Cola?’

He asked if I wanted to wash. I walked into a bathroom and there was a mirror, and, my God, I looked at myself and it was just like in the movies. I saw myself and it just stunned me.

Daily: Was that the first time you’d seen yourself since you were kidnapped?

Hargrove: Yes. Well, I had little bits, like one square inch, of mirror, but never in its entirety, ever. I had a big bushy beard. My hair was gray when I was kidnapped, but it was bright orange when I was released. Right now, my hair is just now turning gray again.

I didn’t want to waste time, so I finally got a car and I looked back behind us was the motorbike with the same Indian who took me down. We finally drive into Cali. By then we had been driving three hours, and I go and I walk into my house at 8:15 in the evening.

I walked into the kitchen door … my son said, ‘Oh my God.’

The other one [son] came out and my wife was talking to my brother on the phone in Texas. When I walked in she started to scream, ‘He’s here! He’s here!’

The thing was, another guy who had been kidnapped by the same folks had just been dumped in the driveway, but his corpse had been dumped in the driveway. Because they were all screaming, my brother assumed it was a body that had been dumped because my wife had dropped the phone. I picked up the phone and said, ‘Hello Raford. What’s everyone screaming about?’

Daily: Is your life as back to normal now as it can be?

Hargrove: It may be as back to normal as it can be, but it’s a hell of a long way from normal. Our life is very, very hectic. You don’t come out of something like that … the phone is ringing all the time, and there’s so many things; it’s hard to explain.

Daily: Will you ever go back to Colombia?

Hargrove: I could never go back to Colombia. It’s not that I wouldn’t; I couldn’t. I would be a marked person. My days in Colombia are finished. Exactly what I’ll do, I don’t know yet. I hope to remain working in some way with international agriculture development.

Daily: Any possibility of returning to Iowa State?

Hargrove: I really don’t know right now.

Daily: Can I ask you your age?

Hargrove: I was 50 when I was kidnapped and somehow I was 51 when I got out. It’s definitely changed our lives, trouble is I don’t know exactly how. Seems like it was a long, long time ago, but it really wasn’t.

Daily: Doesn’t seem fair.

Note: Thomas Hargrove is the third ISU alumnus to be abducted by international terrorists. Terry Anderson and Thomas Sutherland were kidnapped and held for several years in Lebanon.