"All I did was walk in here," he said in a telephone interview to the Washington Post. "I walked ... through the mountains for two days. I had a marching song in my mind. I just repeated the cadence over and over."
When Tom was released, several guerrillas walked with him down the mountain, but abandoned him as they got closer to areas the Colombian army controlled. As he approached more populated areas, Tom received rides from locals until he got home, according to the Seattle Times.
Tom was grabbed from his job at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in the communications division. His guards that day were recruits for the group. FARC, according to the BBC, used kidnapping as a way to fund their war with the government. "The guerrillas were conducting what's called a 'miracle fishing' operation," said his son to the media organization. "They basically would set up these roadblocks looking for cars or cash — just anything that could get them a little bit of money for their cause. But when this American was there all of a sudden, that's where the big money was."
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