Sauce maker Heinz has tracked down the Colombian, who was spending a month alone at sea when his malfunctioning boat was picked up off the coast of Colombia. Rescued a month later, he spent quiet days in his homeland before the company contacted him and made him a generous and surprising offer.
Heinz announced on his Instagram account: “Elvis has been found”. A stroke of luck for the former castaway who is rewarded by the company of one boat. The reason ? He survived a month at sea on garlic powder, bouillon cubes and ketchup.
An offer born of a miracle
Colombian authorities announced last January that they had located the man 47 years disappeared at sea for nearly a month while trying repair a boat.
“I had nothing to eat,” he said in a video released by the local navy, “just a bottle of ketchup, garlic powder and maggi (stock cubes). I mixed everything with water to survive about 24 days.”
Disoriented and very weak, the man had survived in extremis and the Heinz company, learning of this impressive story, had launched an attack hashtag on social media: #FindTheKetchupBoatGuy or “Find the Ketchup Boat Guy”.
Elvis can’t sail
The offering is hilarious to say the least, and for good reason: the man doesn’t know how to navigate. Because of this, he had not been able to reach the shore. If there’s a lot of talk about the company’s generous gift, it won’t do the Colombian much good at the moment.
Heinz rents the help that Internet users receive to do this project and find Elvis.
In our search for Elvis François we received thousands of likes, shares and kind messages. It was an incredible collective effort across six continents that resulted in hundreds of articles and leads and our final encounter with Elvis.