Minnetonka mom sues trekking company in college son’s fatal fall

Editor’s note: In an earlier version of this story, the People to People Ambassador Programs was incorrectly identified.

The narrow mountainside path snaking 300 feet above the Gori Ganga River in the Himalayas was treacherous even in the best of conditions.

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As Thomas Plotkin, a 20-year-old college student from Minnetonka, made his way along it two years ago in a light drizzle as daylight ebbed, he slipped on a wet rock and fell, landing on the path’s edge. But his backpack — which weighed roughly one-third of what he did — pulled him head first over the ledge and into the flooded river below.

His body was never found.

Plotkin’s mother, Elizabeth Brenner, claims in a lawsuit against the company that ran the semester-long trek in India that the students weren’t properly trained, that they were poorly equipped and that when her son disappeared, the company’s instructors were slow to get help.

The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court, is against National Outdoor Leadership School, or NOLS, headquartered in Lander, Wyo. A spokesman for the company said he couldn’t discuss the case.

The suit says that Plotkin’s death was the result of NOLS’ “willful and wanton” negligence and that the company knew there was a significant risk “of severe injury or death.”

Moreover, after Plotkin fell and other students tried to find him, NOLS instructors dragged their feet seeking help in a nearby village, the suit contends.

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Those instructors told NOLS’ head of risk management in Wyoming about the incident before they informed the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, who were in a village about a mile away, the suit says.

NOLS’ own investigation determined the death “was nothing more than a tragic accident,” the suit says. But an inquiry by the Indian government was more damning, saying the path the students were on “comprises a rough terrain and is very bad in some instances.”

“Keeping these adverse geographical conditions in mind, the possibility of an accident can never be denied, and hence it does not seem proper to have trekked that path during the evening and under a light drizzle,” the Indian investigation concluded.

Plotkin was among thousands of students who enroll each year in scores of programs that take them abroad. NOLS has about 3,000 students a year in its field-based programs, said Bruce Palmer, the school’s director of admissions and marketing. He said about 230,000 students have graduated from the program since it started in 1965.

Plotkin’s Sept. 22, 2011, death made him the 12th person to die on a NOLS course, and the first since 1999. He was also the first NOLS student to die abroad; the others were in Wyoming, Washington or Alaska.

As Brenner discovered in the days and weeks after her son’s death, there is little or no oversight of the programs through which American students study abroad, said Sheryl Hill, of Mound. Her son, Tyler Hill, died on a People to People Ambassador trip to Japan in 2007.

“What we’ve learned is that there is no oversight. There are no laws. There is no accountability,” said Hill, who went on to establish the ClearCause Foundation, a nonprofit that seeks to get federal standards for study-abroad programs, among other student travel-related issues.

Hill and Brenner told state Sen. Terri Bonoff, DFL-Minnetonka, about their concerns. Next year, Bonoff and state Rep. Yvonne Selcher, DFL-Minnetonka, plan to introduce legislation requiring study-abroad and student-exchange programs to report injuries and deaths, something they are not now required to do.

“They don’t even have to tell you when bad things happen,” said Hill. “We’re trying to put the ‘count’ in ‘accountability.’ These programs are encouraging kids to go abroad, and they’re offering credits, and they need to be transparent. When they’re putting our students on unsafe roads or in unsafe houses and they refuse to talk to parents about it, they need to be sanctioned.”

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As alleged in Brenner’s lawsuit, the chain of events before and after Plotkin’s death depict a program that left students unprepared for what they were about to experience — and then didn’t react promptly when tragedy struck.

Plotkin was an economics major at the University of Iowa when, in the spring of 2011, he decided to attend NOLS’ “Semester in India” course the coming fall, worth 16 college credits. The course included backpacking in the Himalayas.

Plotkin arrived in India on Aug. 25 and completed the five-day first-aid course. He and the other students were then to spend 30 days backpacking.

Plotkin was in “excellent” physical condition when the trip started, the suit says. He had played varsity hockey and lacrosse at Hopkins High School, and had done physical conditioning before the trip.

In the first 19 days, they hiked 41 miles up the Gori Ganga River Valley.

On Sept. 21, they were given a nine-day supply of food; at this point, Plotkin’s backpack weighed more than 60 pounds, the suit says.

The following day, Plotkin’s group was hiking in a steady drizzle on a 6-foot-wide trail with rain-slicked rocks, the suit says. “A sharp drop-off to the left of the students stretched down nearly 300 feet to the swollen, rushing Gori Ganga River.”

Plotkin was descending on the path when his left foot slipped inward on a wet rock. He landed on his backside on the edge of the trail, but his backpack’s heft pulled him over backwards. There was no level ground to land on, and he plummeted head first over the ledge.

David Hanners can be reached at 612-338-6516.

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