Friends knew Alfonso Vidal’s remarkable story: While on a fishing trip in his native Venezuela, the then-23-year-old was kidnapped by Colombian guerrillas. Releasing a book about the experience “seemed a little self-serving,” Vidal says, but he relented. “A Long Way From Caracas: Kidnapping, Exile, and the Adventures of Trusting God” is a memoir about faith, family, and how ordinary people can overcome extraordinary circumstances.
Vidal believes the Colombians who kidnapped him, his friend, and his friend’s father in January 1997 wanted the small Cessna airplane they took on the fishing trip so it could be sold to drug cartels — “this is the theory,” he says.
The group was released, without the aircraft, after 11 days. Deciding it was time to leave Venezuela, Vidal set his sights on Evansville, where a cousin lived. The River City “seemed to be a perfect place that had all the resources,” he says.
An engineering student in the South American country when he was kidnapped, Vidal finished his studies at the University of Evansville. He and his wife, Daniela, who also hails from Venezuela, became naturlized U.S. citizens in 2013, the same year he opened Vidal Plastics. Together, they’ve raised “three little Hoosiers,” as he calls their children. An entrepreneur who founded Surazal Group in 2024, Vidal also established the nonprofit Hospitality and Outreach for Latino Americans (HOLA). Daniela has been the chancellor of Ivy Tech Community College Evansville since 2020. Vidal Plastics closed in 2022.
Vidal says he holds hope for an improved political climate in Venezuela. But he also hasn’t looked back, and one focus of his book is his family’s embrace of dual cultures. “God puts you in the place he wants to use you,” Vidal says, “and Evansville was very welcoming for us.”
“A Long Way From Caracas: Kidnapping, Exile, and the Adventures of Trusting God” is available for purchase at Barnes & Noble and on Amazon.
