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KEEP HOPE ALIVE

The hostages were chained up inside of a barbed wire fence deep in the Colombian jungle. Many of them had been there for more than ten years. The hostages were all soldiers who’d been kidnapped by FARC, a violent rebel army.

Conditions were bleak and hope was running out. But one man, Colonel Jose Espejo hadn’t lost hope. And though he didn’t know it at the time, his hope would eventually reach, and ultimately free the desperate jungle hostages.

Colonel Espejo had been working for Colombia’s military for 22 years and was ready to hang up his hat. He was nearing retirement, but the thought of retiring just didn’t feel right when he still had men trapped behind enemy lines.

He racked his brain, trying to come up with a way to send a message to the trapped soldiers. He realized there was only one man who could come up with the type of ingenious idea that he needed. He called advertising executive Juan Carlos Ortiz.

It might seem strange to call a man who works in advertising to help you rescue hostages deep in the jungle, but Ortiz wasn’t just any advertising executive. He was special.

Just a few years before, Ortiz had created a television commercial for the government to help them fight Colombia’s drug problem. The commercial took place on a bus and showed a cocaine addict standing behind a man with dandruff on his shoulders. The cocaine addict, desperate to get high, mistakes the man’s dandruff for cocaine. He puts his face on the man’s shoulder and snorts the dandruff up his nose. The ad ends with the words, “Cocaine is addictive. Very addictive.”

The ad was a huge hit. It was creative, funny and surprising. It was just what the Colombian government was looking for. Ortiz won a prestigious advertising award in France that brought him national acclaim in Colombia. He became a national hero.

Ortiz’s celebration was short-lived. Soon after his ad aired, FARC, who were heavily involved in the drug trade, began to threaten his life.

Ortiz bought a bullet-proof car to protect his family, but the threats continued. To escape the FARC, Ortiz ended up moving to New York with his family.

Ortiz finally felt safe again. But he never forgot what the FARC had put his family through.

His unwavering contempt for the FARC combined with his abundance of ingenious ideas made him the go-to guy for the Colombian army’s strangest requests in their battle against the rebel guerilla group.

One time the Colombian army asked him for a way to persuade female FARC members to rejoin normal society. Ortiz came up with a plan to make them think about motherhood and what kind of life they were missing by rejecting society and living in the jungle.

Following Ortiz’s plan, the army dropped seven million baby pacifiers over the jungle with messages encouraging women guerillas to rejoin society.

During Christmas time, Ortiz told the army to put Christmas trees up that would be visible to FARC, again in an attempt to make the rebels think about what they were missing out on. He also orchestrated a mission that sent soccer balls floating down a river to FARC with messages of peace written on them.

Ortiz had definitely created his fair share of creative solutions to fight FARC, but this mission was different. The stakes were higher.

Colonel Jose Espejo was planning rescue missions and he needed a way to tell the hostages to not give up hope and to be prepared. FARC always killed hostages at the first sight of military intervention, so the hostages needed to know that they had not been forgotten and to be ready for rescue. They knew it would be difficult, if not impossible to send a message that could be received by the hostages, but wouldn’t be received by FARC. Ortiz suggested using the radio to hide a message. The FARC were radio fans and often listened to it during long hikes, and during down time.

Soon after Ortiz’s suggestion, the eureka moment followed. Another member of the team suggested using Morse code.

Morse code is a system of long and short taps or sounds used to communicate messages. Since all of the hostages were members of the military, they’d learned Morse code in basic training. And it was very unlikely that even a single member of FARC, who were all peasants from the fields, would recognize Morse code.

The idea snowballed from there. Ortiz was a former musician, and though his career never took off, he knew he could create a pop song for the radio.

What about hiding Morse code in a song? Was that possible?

It sounded easy, but it was no easy task. First they had to write a song. They decided to create something that would catch the hostages’ attention. They titled the song, “Better Days” and wrote lyrics like, “In the middle of the night / Thinking about what I love the most / I feel the need to sing… About how much I miss them.”

Then they worked on hiding the Morse code in the rhythm of the music. In the end, they decided to add a lyric, “Listen to the message brother,” before inserting the code. The Morse code carried the hidden message, “19 people rescued. You’re next. Don’t lose hope.”

Why was a message of hope so important?

According to scientific research, hope is critical to survival. Hope is made up of two key elements – belief and expectation. When the brain experiences a combination of belief and expectation that things will improve, it actually begins to block out pain. That’s because hope stimulates the release of endorphins, which mimic morphine. Morphine is one of the most common pain relievers used in modern medicine.

Hope is such a powerful indicator of success and good health that scientists have even created a way to measure it. The “Hope Scale” measures how hopeful someone is. The results of the Hope Scale can give us clues about how well a person might do on an exam, or how well people will cope with an illness.

For example, one study showed that hopeful college students who scored higher on the Hope Scale, had higher grades than those who were less hopeful. The hopeful students were also much likelier to finish college. Another study on hope was done at a nursing home for the elderly.

Researchers wanted to know why some nursing home residents were thriving and others were not, even when their living conditions were identical. What they found was that those residents who maintained hope despite their circumstance were the ones who were thriving, while the ones without hope were withering away.

The same was true for hopeful cancer patients. Those who were more hopeful were less likely to die from their cancer, and more likely to reach remission. Hopeful people were more determined to work things out. They were more likely to take their lives into their own hands and make a real effort to look for solutions to their problems.

Hope not only positively affects the hopeful person, but it’s been shown to affect those around them in a very real way. Hope can bring people together, and can inspire them to keep moving forward.

So what happened with the hostages?

The song played on over 130 radio stations throughout the jungle and was heard by more than three million people. Some hostages heard it and did recognize the Morse code. They passed the message of hope from hostage to hostage. With the renewed hope, some were even able to escape and pass information to the military so that they could rescue others.

The song worked. Even the FARC, who were oblivious to the hidden message enjoyed it.

Hope played a huge role in rescuing these hostages. Colonel Espejo’s hope that he could free his men drove him to contact Ortiz. Ortiz’s hope that FARC would someday fall inspired him to work as hard as possible to find a way to help Colombia’s army. And in the end, it was the hope that the Morse code carried, that gave the hostages the boost they needed to find freedom. So the next time you hear someone say the common English expression, “don’t get your hopes up,” tell them what you know about hope. Simply having your hopes up makes it more likely that what was once just a hope, will someday be a reality.