TRAPPED

Hey, everybody, am me and TJ here, And what is it that you feel.

Any sort of confined space?

I get, I wasn't expecting that of an answer.

Did you think I was going to say?

I don't know, but but what is that you fear? People give me a fear of loss, a fear of health issues, fear of all kinds of things you went immediately to, like a phobia.

Yeah, claustrophobia, I definitely have it. I think I'm a pretty generally daring person. But if you ask me what would be a nightmare scenario, it would be to be in a submarine. I just think this feeling of being

So yes, yes, he's listening to us on the way to the airport. Okay, I fly a lot. It's just but I actually I'm struggling with fear. I have a fear of flying because I'm scared the plane is gonna go down. My fear has nothing to do with being in a confined space.

So you know, I hate the window seat and the middle seat. And it's not because.

That's because you go to the bathroom once.

But I actually want to be able to know that I can get out quickly if I need to. I do have that slight and neurosis. It's funny, I've never fully explained that to you.

I don't have. Okay, there is a two different ones. There's a claustrophobia that's the fear of small spaces, right, okay. But then there's a cli throw that's a different one called a clithrow phobia, I believe, which is actual fear of being trapped. Oh so, if you're claustrophobic, you see a small space, you see that elevator, and you go oh god, and you get anxiety. That's claustrophobia. The other is when I see the small space, I got no

You just pulled that phobia out of thin air and It's fully describes me, and yet I've never heard it before.

I got the google it again. I think it's I'm saying, all right, Clythrow, and he's giving me the thumbs up.

Clythrow phobia phobia.

So it's a different thing where you don't you're not scared of the space itself, but the idea of being trapped in that space is the problem. That could be a large room even, right, Yes, but it's the fear of not having a way of getting out.

So yes, clythrow phobia. I'm afraid of not being able to get out.

Okay, where does this So?

I don't know if some of this stuff is just in us, or some people get phobias and fears.

We all fear sharks because of Joss.

Yes, right, Yes, a movie can set you off cause a particular fear. I think we might be doing I wonder if we're doing this to Sabine. Yeah, my eleven year. Everybody at this point knows that you and I are huge fans of horror movies. But she has since Thursday, she let me know that you and I have She dinna say forced, but we have put her in a position that since Thursday and we're here sitting on Monday. She has watched five or six horror movies because of us.

She's eleven.

I don't feel great about that.

Okay, but here's the thing. Three of them is when she was solely in your care.

So that's why I said, I don't feel great about that. I didn't say we should be ashamed of ourselves. I said, wow, that's on me. I will say the ones that we watched were so excuse me, it a quiet place and a quiet place to this because she has been coming to the theater with us when we have some of these new fun blockbuster horror movies coming out, and I know that a quiet place. Three, the third installment is

Okay, you were doing her a favor. Oh I didn't understand. That's my mistake.

No. I I now that she's voiced that we will adjust.

Okay, worry, but but a movie like Jaws makes us all fear sharks. But we love horror movies, yes, and there are so many as to think there are subgenres of horror movies, Like somebody say Hey, there's a new horror movie coming out. We'll go, Okay, what genre is it of horror movies? So there's comedy horror.

Or which we've really recently gotten into. We love I'm really loving a comedy horror.

But we got.

Slashers, we got vampire movies, we have supernatural supernatural, you got demonic, you got possession, you have.

Yeah.

Yes, we have all the random like yes, but then you get more specific. There are some that have to do with planes going down. Yes, there's some having to do with being buried alive aliens. Yes, they get very specific. And one genre we also like is elevator horror.

Yes, we actually just saw one called Elevator.

Yes.

But my favorite elevator horror movie is you know it Devil Shyamalan. It is so good.

It did not.

Get as much love as I thought it should. If you have not seen Devil, check out Devil.

Another one, and this is in the genre of being trapped, is being trapped in caves the Descent and The Descent too rarely is a sequel as good as the original, and I would argue that The Descent falls into that category. Wow, trapped in a cave system with sub human life forms that have evolved in these dark, wet spaces.

And don't watch this while you're eating.

Then, as you mentioned, there's trapped in homes and trapped in rooms.

Oh yes, the whole Oh I forgot about that.

Strangers, That's what I'm thinking. Those two are some excellent ones. And when you're trapped in a room. All the Saw movies are basically that.

Oh yeah, Oh gore is another category of.

You can have one, and that was like maybe a double genre with the Saw movies.

But some of these, I will admit they make you scared of little things, like I almost fear kids sometimes.

Oh you don't like the demand of kids. You say, if there is a creepy kid, I'm not watching, And that is, unfortunately, because I love watching creepy.

It's something about creepy kids that dead turn me out because they look in a scent and there's just a desert orphan.

Oh boy, the boy too.

I've seen all these but and nol Sabine messages with me. She'll stand in the dark in the hallway and make.

A like a oh yeah.

My daughter used to go to sleep. She was so driven into just being prepared. She would go to sleep in her Catholic school uniform, and she was an early riser, and sometimes she would wake up early and come and stand at the foot of my bed in Catholic school uniform at the age of like eight, and I would wake up going.

Oh my god. Yeah, but she did that.

And I get what you're saying. But I still like watching creepy kids.

I still do, you know, I watch them.

But so all these subgenres we speak of, now there is one other. It's almost a sub sub genre.

It has very specific Yes, it has to.

Do with being trapped. It has to do some some could say fear of heights. Yes, you could throw that in. There are Survival Cold, Yes, if you get trapped in a on a gondola or a ski lift.

Yes, there's a couple of these movies that are out there.

Like Yes, I have always been a fan of the twenty ten flick Frozen, not the Disney one, but the one where three people get trapped on a ski lift and it's sub freezing temperatures and there are wolves below. It doesn't end well for several of the people on.

Them, and it's good.

I want to clarify that. You also do like the Disney Frozen too. Okay, we're just talking about a different one now. But the way it came out, I.

Didn't want it to be internalet from the other Frozen, like you know, they work actually together. If you're just it's too much, too much gore, too much fear, you just go to Frozen and it's great Disney version.

But then there's another that had those folks on a ski lift, essentially sitting outside exposed. Yes, there's another movie called Break Now. This one folks are trapped in a gondola. They are together. The thing I think it breaks down but freezing temperatures, but they it becomes a fight for survival, not just the elements but each other, right right, Which.

Is kind of like what the elevator movies have been like too, because it's not just the fact that you're in an elevator, but who are you on the elevator with? So, who are you in this gondola with? And so, yeah, that's fear and so it's not meant to be a horror comedy. But because it was originally a Russian flick, if you watch it here in the United States, it's dubbed over in English, which kind of makes it funny. So I found myself laughing and being on the edge

But you're a skier, a longtime skier. Have you ever had an issue on a gondola ski lift?

Getting off the ski lift many times, or get off fallen on my face?

I'm saying, I'm saying, do you have an accident that's not your false?

No, no, no.

I have not. But I'm telling you, anyone who is a skier, I can't imagine not having had that thought run through them. What would I do if it suddenly stopped? There are glitches, and all of a sudden, you know, someone like me would have fallen getting off of the skey lift, and so the whole thing has to shut down and they have to kind of reset it. And that happens a lot.

When you've seen you've seen that happen.

I've been on the sky lift where all of a sudden it stops and then you kind of are twisting in the wind and dangling. And sometimes it stops at really high points, like if you're out west in Colorado or somewhere where they have really high mountains. It is you start thinking the worst. And I've been on there with my kids and I've had actually both of my girls being a little nervous, like, Mom, are we going to start back up?

But that's understood. Answer, that's a part of you will understand that sometimes this.

Happens part regularly, okay, so regularly.

Okay, So you knew you didn't necessarily think you were in trouble. I mean, your mind might go climes.

It takes longer than you think it should, and it is. It is frightening, but thankfully for me, it's always started right back up.

All right. What would you do?

Do?

You know what you would do? Usually you have your phone with you. I thought about it, you make a phone call. But other than that, you just have to hang tight and wait.

Right.

Yeah, you hope that your hand warmers that you have in your gloves or something might last longer. But most of the time, when it stops at a high enough point, you don't have a what would you do scenario? There's nothing to do, Like, you can't do anything. You are at the mercy of the workers who are operating the gondola or the ski lift, or the people on the mountain, knowing that you're unaccounted for. But short of that, like

Hopefully that never ever happens to you, because I would be just devastated waiting for word, because I would not be up there with you.

Maybe one day, not after today, though maybe not after our next guest.

Oh yeah, we say that because it sounds like an absolute nightmare that it turns out somebody actually lived it very recently, a nightmare or something that you see in a movie. But it absoluutely did just happen to a woman out in California. Yeah, Lake Tahoe actually got stuck in a gondola alone overnight.

We have Monica Lasso. She is joining us and she is okay, but she survived. I believe it was fifteen hours in a gondola where the temperatures dripped dipped to the mid twenties. She had no cell phone, and she has lived to tell us all about it. Monica, thank you for being with us. How are you today?

Hi?

Amy and hid Monica?

Why did you not have a cell phone with you?

Micosas quel Yea.

She says she didn't have her cell phone because she put her stuff in She was with a group of people and she put all her stuff and backpack with her friends, and so friends had her cell phone.

How did you know the gondola wasn't broken and that it was actually uh, you had been forgotten up there.

I realized I am attacked in the night when I lost my boys, boys from screaming so much and getting not wrestled.

What was your biggest fear, Monica? Did you think that no one would ever find you? Were you afraid that some harm could come to you.

That one of her fingers or her feet were gonna freeze?

Oh well, Monica, give us a sense of when you got stuck and it stopped moving, you were dangling. How high up were you?

Metros prol a.

Very way in.

Maes the Mili metro.

So she said the gondola itself was about six meters high, but that the actual mountain was thousands of feet above sea level.

And Monaga, you weren't up so high that you couldn't see people on the ground. You could see people down there moving around. Did you see a lot of people?

Yes, I saw a lot, a lot of truck worker.

N a round eight around.

Me, and you were and you what were you doing to try and get their attention?

Scream, scream a lot just that I could do, I could eat.

You said you saw. It still drives It's fascinating to think there were eight people at least that were that close to you and they couldn't hear you. At what point or at any point do you think you started to panic?

No, I didn't feel panic, but just frustraight. I start to feel frustraight, and.

I give up.

I come now, just I need to keep myself.

Alive.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it was so frustrating that people were right there, they didn't know you were in the gondola. You couldn't get them to hear you. So I understand why you'd be frustrated. But were you nervous? And just the fact that it was getting dark, You didn't have a cell phone, you didn't have a light, and it was getting cold.

When the night come.

I tried to still stay calm and as I want to survive and I see my friend and family again.

Did you ever think about trying to escape from the gondola? Open a door, open a window and jump.

Actually no, actually not really.

I I when I opened the window to a screen, they call enter to the gondola, and I didn't want to want exupposed to myself to the call anymore.

And I was so high that I was sure to break a bone.

Did you sleep at all during those fifteen hours?

And nothing? They called us and let me rest.

I still try try because I my body, my body heart a lot, maybe only for a minute, but my body woke me up with.

Its trembling, trembling because you were cold? So how did you go about staying warm?

Miss deer Commiss Manos, yes, fellow.

She would rub her hands and fit together literally the whole night to try to stay warm.

Wow, because I got really really cold, and I know that you didn't. We said what you didn't have? But you did have a watch? What did having that watch on your wrist mean to you?

See?

Look the finale on Tempo your finale art experiences, Savia.

She said that the watch helped her realize and remember that this is only going to last so long and and it will end, and so keeping track of time helped her kind of get through it and know that it would be over at some point.

And Monica, was it a comfort knowing that it would be over in the morning. You were you were essentially just waiting for them to get to work in the morning.

Thea Savia that you are.

Betro She says that yes, she knew that when you know, daylight started to break, that there would be movement, there would be workers. But in the back of her mind she also doubted and said, wait a minute, what if it's a holiday, what if people are off today? And that, thank god, wasn't the end result. But she did have a fear.

That's completely understandable. That would definitely have been a fear of mine too. I have to ask you, Monica, fifteen hours you had to have to go to the bathroom, what did you do? How badly did you have to be? Tell us how you handle that? In a gondola.

Sola maia.

Ilse, she says that she just waited, She held it. She did not want to be, you know, sitting in urine the whole night. She said, if it had been more than fifteen hours, it would have been a different story.

But then when you finally got out, is the first thing you did was run.

To the bathroom.

No, the.

Policy ya the par America Come Again.

Is a show.

Important.

She says that she actually had to do police interviews and paramedics checked her out, so she kind of forgot about it and wasn't able to use the restauran until all after all that happened.

Wow, that is impressive. I know that you knew in the back of your head that you were going to be okay eventually the gondola was going to start working in the morning. But what about your friends and your boyfriend, who had no idea where you were, if you were alive or dead. What were they going through?

Okay, they were scared and saw the wars.

They notified the police that I was missing and made up post about disappearance on Facebook.

They were really.

Very bad emotionally, they're.

So free a lot.

What was it like to reunite with your friends and your boyfriend?

Hi, wait, I leave your fame, we need to.

She said that it was a huge relief, a big bundle of emotions and happiness just to be reunited.

At the end of the day, there was a lot of happiness because Monica, is it fair to say your boyfriend, your friends feared that you might be dead, that you might not be alive.

Yes, you.

Pen on your bill and you onla.

She says that between the hours of six am and seven am, when the whole night had gone by, her boyfriend and her friends felt like she was dead. They thought she was dead. They were like, the way she could have survived all night on her own. And so when that call came in earlier, I mean a little later in the morning, they were like shocked.

And Monica, what did you have with you? We know the watch, but did you have any food, any water, any snack anything with you?

No?

Naa ana.

She had no food, no water, and the last time she had had anything was around one pm that day.

Wow, no food, no water, no cell phone. Monica, are you going to bring your cell phone with you now everywhere you go?

Super important?

Son is a technology, she said, absolutely, She will definitely take it everywhere. It's a technology that could really save your life, and she's gonna take it everywhere she goes.

Okay, so Monica, you will now take it everywhere you go? Does that include on your next skiing trip? When which is coming up?

When a person, she says that she's normally not the type of person who would let an experience like this affect her life, can stop her from living, But she says, for now, she can't really picture herself going back up there, so she needs some time.

That makes a lot of sense. Monica, I want to ask you, when you look back now at those fifteen hours, what did you learn about yourself when you were up there alone and scared?

The personal loco coke sache came important moment.

And gay yeah.

Persona man took it and some were TOAs pa, yeah, it's okay. Important.

She says that she learned how important it is to take some time for yourself and connect with yourself and connect with nature, and that's something that she had not been giving herself for a long time, and so this was like an interesting way to do that, like, you know, not knowing that she needed that time for herself. And she also learned that she's much stronger than she thought she was.

Monica, strangely, would you now say this was a blessing?

Yes for them porque.

But fami, she says in a way, she giggles and says, in a way, it was kind of like a blessing because she did learn about herself that she was stronger than she thought. But in another sense, it was a very difficult experience. It was painful. She even felt like it was a punishment of sorts.

Well, Monica, you have been through quite an ordeal. We're just happy you're you're in good spirits and you're in good health, and I know your friends are just so relieved to have you back in their lives. So thank you for joining us and share your harrowing experience with us. But we appreciate it and you thank you so much.