My Brother Darren......Missing (News Report)

Posted by Sarah

Darren's story reported by Brent Hunsaker published 2/08/2011

Payson man's body returned from Brazil after 42 days

PAYSON, Utah (ABC 4 News) - Darren Cook loved Brazil and its people. He had served in the northern part of the country as a missionary for the Church of J

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esus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

Four years later, he returned as a tourist. 

He was also on the lookout for business opportunities. With both the World Cup and Olympics coming to Brazil, he thought there might be a way he could make money using his knowledge of the language and country.

But mostly, Darren Cook wanted an adventure. He left in November planning to stay four months. 

While in Rio de Janeiro in mid-December, he took off by himself to explore the waterfalls outside of the city. He did not return. Five days later his body was found. He had apparently fallen off a cliff.

Kyle and Holly Cook were initially told through an interpreter only that the body of an American had been found, but by the description of the clothing they knew it was Darren.

Darren’s parents immediately set about to convince authorities of what they already knew. 

They immediately sent Darren’s dental records via email only to be later told the digital files attached to the email were unacceptable. So, they sent physical copies of his dental x-rays by mail. They never arrived. They set another set by express mail. They arrived after seven days, but could only be retrieved by paying “a fee.”

“A half a world away and we just had no control. All we could do is call and beg,” said Darren’s father, Kyle Cook.

After authorities confirmed for themselves that the body was indeed Darren, then came the demands for money. On one particularly discouraging morning, Kyle Cook was awakened around 3:00 a.m. by a call telling him to deposit $29,000 in a Brazilian bank account. “You know I can’t come up with 29-thousand,” he remembers saying.

On another occasion he was told it would be cheaper to cremate the body. But as he looked into the option he discovered the supposed savings were eaten up in additional red tape and “fees.” “I don’t hate Brazil,” said Kyle Cook. “But I do have a problem with the bribes that are common.”

It seemed as if they would never be able to bring him home and would have to arrange for strangers to bury him in Brazil.

“There were days when I wondered if we were ever going to find the end to the nightmare that we were living,” said Holly Cook.

And in fact the Cook family believes that Darren’s body would still be in Brazil if it had not been for two “good Samaritans” – one in Utah and the other in Brazil – who volunteered their time and would not quit until the family, got closure.

Finally, after 42 agonizing days, the body came home and was buried in Payson.

“The US consulate called me 5 or 6 days after we had buried Darren and said, ‘Do you have any questions?’ And I said I’ve had 40 days of questions and nobody to ask those questions to. Where were you?”

Though Brazil’s economy has been the envy of South America and it’s won bids to host both the World Cup and summer Olympic Games, the Cook’s experience seems to show the country still has a long way to go to shed the image of a 3rd world country.

The Cooks don’t want their story to discourage other parents from allowing members of their own families to go to foreign countries. However, they want them to understand that if something goes wrong, the bureaucracies of those countries cannot be depended on to do the right thing.

Of Darren’s trip to Brazil, his mother Holly concluded, “I couldn’t hold him back. It was his dream to go, so we let him go. Just make sure you give them a hug before they leave.”