Welcome to Rumbel Strip, Vermont. I'm Erica Heilman. Today a story produced by my friend Larry Masett.

It begins in 1999 when Steve Fugut decided to walk the Appalachian Trail.

Here's Steve.

I was reading a magazine and read about the Appalachian Trail.

I'd never even heard of it. I didn't know what it was. the magazine and read about the Appalachian Trail.

I never even heard of it.

I didn't know what it was.

I read about it and I said, hey, I can do this.

And I thought, wow, I'll do this trail.

And while I'm doing it, my son can run my business and I said hey why don't you run this for me and I'll go hike this trail. It'll be a blast and he said this is great. We do it well I took off I got on the Appalachian Trail

I'd gone approximately 1140 miles I was Blue Mountain Summit Pennsylvania and they

told me I had a emergency phone call to make.

I made the emergency phone call.

My son had gone down to the beach, and he had taken my 38 and stuck it in his mouth and he ended both our lives.

When I got on that phone and they told me that my son was gone. I shot back from that telephone 10, maybe 12, 15 feet.

I could not stop screaming.

The death of your child is like,

it's not supposed to happen.

It's as if someone carved your heart out of your body

with an axe while you are yet breathing.

There is no way to prepare for it. There is nothing else

compared to it. We are not prepared for this in any way. So I went home and I buried my boy. And my daughter was in, I was, we were trying to comfort each other, only

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