Alive after 32 years of being dead

But what about the rest of his family?
Were they considered missing or dead also?

Anderson and other survivors have published a book on the flood and erected a roadside memorial commemorating the victims. She first became intrigued about the fate of Johnson when she helped prepare for the 25th anniversary of the flood in 2001.

She and others planned to mark the occasion by putting up the roadside memorial with the names of the 139 confirmed dead and six others whose bodies were never found.

When she researched for the plaque, she discovered that the Larimer County coroner's office had reported Johnson as missing with just the information that he was from Tulsa, Okla.

"There was no description, no picture, nothing," Anderson recalled.

She and the others figured something didn't add up and decided to leave Johnson's name off the memorial. The death toll, long accepted ?- even if not certain ?- as 145, quietly dropped to 144.

"We decided we had to remove his name and just pray that he was alive somewhere," she said.