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Man believed missing in Capitol Forest seen in car

THURSTON COUNTY, Wash. — The Thurston County Sheriff's Office called off a search and rescue operation Wednesday for a 47-year-old man who was testing his survival skills in the Capitol Forest after they learned he was seen in a car on Saturday.

The Sheriff's Office said Tuesday that Scott Garrow of Lacey watches a lot of the show Survivorman and other TV shows about surviving in the wilderness and decided to try it himself.

Police said Garrow told family members of his plans, but was days overdue.  Up to 30 searchers spent Tuesday hiking in the woods and driving miles of gravel roads in the forest  looking for Scott Garrow butthey had to stop at night when it got too dark to see anything.

Garrow's wife dropped him off in the Capitol Forest on Thursday morning.

Relatives say the man is almost obsessed with  researching wilderness survival. Garrow wanted to finally test himself, to see whether he could fend for himself for a few days in the woods.

Garrow's sister, Gloria Hale, said he's been talking about preparing for natural disasters and wanted to test his survival skills.

"He's been talking about bugging out, like practicing bugging out in case of an apocalypse or whatever," Hale said. "We've talked a lot about natural disasters and you know things like that may happen and what to do."

Gloria said they also talked about finding, preparing and storing food in the wild. Those are skills he wanted to practice last weekend, but when he didn't return home Monday morning as planned, his family reported him as missing.

On Wednesday, the Sheriff's Office said they had called off the search for Garrow after learning he was spotted in a car with another person Saturday in a different part of the forest.