Harrison Ford Had an Unexpected Role in an Incredible Real-Life Rescue

Harrison Ford may just be Indiana Jones and Han Solo on the screen, but his actions involving saving a lost 13-year-old Boy Scout in 2001 show that Ford is also a courageous and compassionate person in real life.

The Boy Spent 18 Hours Lost

Twenty-four years ago this month, Cody Clawson got lost near Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming for 18 hours. He didn’t know where to go, so he slept in a cave.

“It rained and sleeted that night,” Clawson told ABC News years later. “It was pretty scary.”

When he woke up the next morning, he was relieved to hear airplanes and helicopters. “I started looking for an open place that I could signal them,” Clawson said. “I used my belt buckle to reflect the sunlight. They saw it and landed.”

When Clawson saw that none other than Han Solo was the pilot, he couldn’t believe it.

“He said, ‘Good morning,’ and I recognized [his voice] because he said it just like he did in ‘Star Wars,'” Clawson said. “He asked how I was doing and said, ‘You certainly should have earned a merit badge for this.'”

Ford flying over Yellowstone isn’t too surprising, given that he’s lived in Jackson Hole since the 1980s. As an avid fan of the outdoors, he spends a lot of his time in Wyoming, either flying or being active.

“I love to fly up there,” he told Parade. “Or walk in the woods, do some work, ride my road bike or mountain bike.”

Despite Getting Badly Hurt, Harrison Still Loves to Fly

In 2016, Ford was injured when his plane crashed into a golf course. Spine surgeon Sanjay Khurana happened to be playing golf at the Penmar Golf Course when it happened. The aircraft made contact with part of a tree before crashing.

Khurana and others ran to the single-engine, World War II-era plane to help the pilot. “He was stunned a bit,” Khurana told ABC News. “He was moaning and in pain.”

Ford was taken to a nearby hospital with a head wound. While his injuries were deemed non-life-threatening, interviews since then reveal how much of an impact it had on him.

“I changed a lot of things in my life,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “My wife does not fly with me in vintage airplanes anymore — she will in others. I certainly don’t want to have to recover from that kind of accident again. It was really hard on my family and it was hard on me.”

While he knew the 2015 crash was bad, it didn’t put a damper on his desire to fly, chalking it up as a mechanical issue. ” I went back to flying,” he said. “I know what happened. So that’s part of the reason [I went back].