The media loves to run stories about police doing something wrong.
They never tell you about the deputy who remembered a trespasser's name from three years ago.
And that memory is the only reason Andrew Giddens is still alive today.
He Was Sinking Below the Grass Line
Giddens, 36, of Jacksonville, went missing on Valentine's Day – depressed after a breakup, and last contact was a phone call with his dad.
Nobody heard from him for nearly two weeks.
When deputies finally located his abandoned car near a Vulcan Materials sand plant in Putnam County, Florida, they had no idea what they were about to find.
Giddens had wandered onto the industrial property and sunk shoulder-deep into mining mud near a borrow pit – pulled so far down that the surrounding grass was above his head, leaving him nearly impossible to spot from the surface.
Deputies launched an aviation unit to search from the air.
They found nothing.
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Giddens was only discovered when a Vulcan employee – who had gotten his own vehicle stuck on the property – stumbled across him by chance.
Thirty Firefighters, Four Hours, Peanut Butter Mud
The Palatka Fire Department confirmed Giddens had been trapped without food or water for several days while temperatures dropped to freezing.
He could talk.
He just couldn't move.
Melrose Fire Chief Kevin Mobley – 37 years in the fire service – said it was the first mud extraction he'd ever responded to in his entire career, and the mud explained why.
Crews described it as so thick it resembled peanut butter.
Rescuers initially tried to drag Giddens free with ropes.
The mud wouldn't give him up.
Thirty firefighters from Putnam County Fire Rescue, the Palatka Fire Department, the Melrose Fire Department, and Clay County Fire Rescue worked the scene – laying ladders, backboards, and wooden pallets across the unstable surface to distribute their weight, inching toward Giddens over a four-hour extraction as daylight failed.
They freed him at 8:30 p.m. and had him airlifted to a trauma center in critical condition.
He is expected to make a full recovery.
The Part the Media Ignored
Every outlet ran the dramatic rescue footage.
Almost none of them told you how Giddens was found in the first place.
Deputy Derrick Holmes had caught Giddens trespassing on a different Vulcan property back in 2023 – and when he spotted an abandoned car near the sand plant on February 23, he recognized both the vehicle and the name on the registration from that three-year-old encounter.
Holmes immediately alerted Vulcan, activated an aviation unit, and filed the missing persons report that kept the search going.
Without that connection, nobody points to the search at that sand plant – and Giddens, buried below the grass line and invisible from the air, almost certainly dies out there.
That's the story worth telling.
A cop did his job right in 2023, remembered the details, and it saved a man's life in 2026.
The Putnam County Sheriff's Office closed their statement with a message worth repeating: check on the people you love during hard times – and if you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988.
Sources:
- Putnam County Sheriff's Office, Facebook statement, February 26, 2026.
- WCJB TV20, "Melrose fire chief details rescue of man trapped in shoulder-deep mud," February 27, 2026.
- CBS12, "BODYCAM: Missing Florida man airlifted in critical condition after hours-long mud rescue," February 26, 2026.
- Palatka Fire Department, Facebook statement, February 27, 2026.
- WKRC Local 12, "Missing man rescued from quicksand-like mud after days without food, water," February 27, 2026.
