For 11 agonizing days, 13-year-old Dakota “Cody” Trenkle Jr. lay in a hospital bed, fighting for his life after vanishing from his Missouri neighborhood.
The teen had gone missing while skateboarding, sparking a desperate three-day search. He was finally discovered at the bottom of a ravine—injured, dehydrated, and barely clinging to life. Rescuers rushed him to St. Louis, where doctors placed him in a medically induced coma with multiple brain bleeds, pneumonia, and severe trauma from the fall.