NATION : American Captive Heads Home After 61-Day Ordeal in Amazon
A freed U.S. gold miner leaving today for his Illinois hometown said Colombian rebels who held him captive for 61 days in the Amazon jungle had treated him “like a king.”
Despite his ordeal, 27-year-old Scott Heimdal said he would return to Ecuador.
He smiled at reporters as he arrived this morning at Quito airport. “They never bothered me,” he said of his kidnapers before he left on a flight via Miami and Chicago.
Heimdal said the first thing he planned to do when he arrived in Peoria was to get a haircut.
“I’m looking forward to getting back,” he said. “I’m looking forward to seeing everybody.”
Heimdal was kidnaped by Colombian guerrillas April 28 in northeastern Ecuador. He was released Friday after his family paid a $60,000 ransom, raised through community donations in Peoria.
The kidnapers had demanded $612,000, but Heimdal said today that they wanted that sum from the company he worked for, a small gold-mining outfit called IMINCO.
Heimdal’s mother, Marge, said the demand for the family had always been $60,000, despite earlier reports that the amount might fall short of the rebel demands.
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