Joe Hunt, 25, was a free spirit, says his dad, Bob Hunt. School and the 9-to-5 was never for Joe, nor would it ever be. He left his home in New Hampshire in January 2018, with nothing but his blue backpack and a tent. He bought his own Greyhound Bus ticket to California, a place he always dreamed of visiting.
He landed in the Monterey area with a traveling partner who goes by the nickname Dinosaur. The pair hitchhiked everywhere together or took the bus. Joe—who went by his road nickname of Boston Joe—got by making and selling handicrafts—mostly sculpting wire around stones to make pendants and other decorative items—and performing on the street for tips.
“He chose a hard life, but he chose it eyes open,” Hunt says. “He knew what he was doing.”
Joe and Dinosaur were planning a trip up to Seattle to visit Joe’s great-uncle, then head back home to New Hampshire, says Hunt. They were waiting for the weather to get warmer and for an ankle injury Joe suffered in January to heal. Last week, in a rare move, Dinosaur left Joe to visit family for a couple of days.
For reasons Hunt and Joe’s mom, Sue, are baffled by, Joe headed out alone on Friday, March 22, and started making his way north on Highway 1. Hunt can’t believe Joe was making the trip to Seattle without Dinosaur.
“Those guys were inseparable, he wouldn’t have gone there alone,” Hunt says.
The Hunts didn’t learn of their son’s fate until a few days later, because Joe wasn’t traveling with much identification. The CHP located them through an address on a Christmas card they'd sent to their son; the card was folded in his wallet.
“He was a sentimental guy,” Hunt says. “He kept a lot of trinkets.”
CHP spokesperson Jessica Madueño declined to answer questions due to the ongoing investigation. Hunt says he was told that Joe was picked up by a CHP officer on Friday as he was hitchhiking north, supposedly because the location he was in wasn’t safe. The officer gave him a ride to another location.
In an email, Madueño later confirmed that a CHP officer received a call at 9:24pm on Friday, of a pedestrian—confirmed as Joe—walking on the right side of the shoulder along Highway 1 Northbound between the Fremont exit and Lightfighter Drive. The officer drove him to a spot in Castroville.
Autopsy results have not been made available to the family yet, other than the most basic of details about what was most likely an instantaneous death. What time that death occurred is in question.
One witness who talked to the Weekly says she saw Joe’s blue backpack standing up next to the highway at around 7:30am Saturday morning. She did not see anything else. Others on social media noted that they also saw the backpack in the morning, as well as a hiking boot in the roadway.
At 9:04am, CHP Officer Landon Calhoun noticed the backpack and stopped to investigate, finding Joe’s body near the pack. Investigators soon arrived on the scene. Traffic was backed up for a couple of hours on both sides of the highway that morning.
The Hunts are scheduled to arrive in California on Thursday, March 28, to claim Joe’s body, have him cremated and take the ashes back home to New Hampshire.
Hunt says he’s been studying Google Maps trying to pinpoint the exact location of where Joe was found so they can visit the spot. They’re also hoping to get more answers from the CHP about what Joe may have said to the officer on Friday about where he was going and why.
The couple also want justice for their son. They want as many people in the Monterey Bay area as possible to know about what happened, in hopes that more witnesses will come forward and help law enforcement find the motorist who killed Joe.
“We want people to know it isn’t some unidentified person. It was Joe and he was a wonderful kid,” Hunt says.
As people find out about the death on Facebook, the couple received an outpouring of love an support. Some of the messages come from people whose lives were touched by Joe as he traveled elsewhere along the East Coast in the years leading up to his trip to California.
“He’s the most compassionate loving guy you can imagine,” Hunt says. “He would do anything for anybody.”
Editor's Note: This post was updated with new information from the CHP.