Missing Scout In Good Condition

An 11-year-old boy who vanished from a Boy Scout camp has been found alive after an intensive four-day search.

Brennan Hawkins was found just before noon near Lily Lake, about five miles northeast of the camp in the Uinta Mountains where he was last seen Friday, said Kay Godfrey, director of public relations for the Great Salt Lake Council.

"He has been found, he is alive, and he's in pretty good shape for an 11-year-old boy," said Godfrey, who called the rescue "a modern-day miracle."

Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds said the boy was "a little dehydrated, a little weak," but was overall in "unbelievable condition."

He was reunited with his parents and their four other children and taken to a hospital.

After downing bottles of water and eating all the granola bars carried by a group of volunteer searchers, the boy asked to play a video game on one rescuer's cell phone, the sheriff said.

The boy carried no food or water, and his family had said he did not have a good sense of direction. But the sheriff said the nights had been warm, with temperatures falling only into the 50s. The area is about 100 miles northeast of Salt Lake City.

Rescuers had feared that he could have fallen in a river that was swollen by heavy snow melt. The East Fork of the Bear River is within 100 yards of the road where the boy was believed to have been walking.

Edmunds said the boy was found not far off the trail, and he had never crossed the river.

It was not immediately clear how he survived or whether he tried to find his way back to camp. "He was in no mood to give us some details," the sheriff said. "He just wanted to eat and see his Mom."

The boy and his family rode in an ambulance together to a Salt Lake City hospital. "He laughed on the way here, just like he always has," said his mother, Jody Hawkins.

"People say that the heavens are closed and God no longer answers prayers. We are here to unequivocally tell you that the heavens are not closed, prayers are answered and children come home," she told reporters as the family arrived at Primary Children's Medical Center.

With a towel around his neck, Brennan waved to reporters as he was unloaded from an ambulance.

Doctors planned to keep him at least overnight to run tests, said Dr. Ed Clark, the hospital's medical director.

He had been camping with his parents since he was three, and that is why they believed that he would stay alive, CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes reports.

Officials said Brennan disappeared somewhere along a dirt road between the camp's artificial climbing wall and the "chow hall," where he was to meet a friend.

Edmunds said investigators will wait until the boy has had time to recover before questioning him.

Volunteer Forrest Nunley, a 43-year-old house painter from Salt Lake City, said he found Brennan "standing in the middle of the trail. He was all muddy and wet."

The boy saw some volunteer searchers on horseback, but "he didn't want to come out. He was too scared. He was a little delirious. I sat him down and gave him a little food," Nunnley said.

On Monday, rescuers found three socks and a sandal in the nearby river, but none belonged to Brennan. The boys' parents also sifted fruitlessly through enough clothing collected from the mountains to fill the bed of a pickup.

Brennan, who had not yet graduated from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts, was visiting the camp with a friend, whose father was volunteering at a three-day session for 1,400 older scouts.