Thank you everyone who very kindly walked me through the process. Rick at Particle read through the posts and was able to diagnose that the device possibly had a corrupted server address and keys.
I downloaded homebrew dfu-utility and then a the cloud debug utility here:
This allowed me to capture the serial output from the device and after Rick looked at it he showed me the solution. We reset the keys and server info after a few false starts. I then reset the device and reloaded tinker and reloaded my programming, or rather my developer did...from Krakow.
Unfortunately there is not yet a solution that keeps it from happening other than to never let the battery die.
Read up on this post for further info:
Please take a moment to view this 37 second clip showing the project in action!
Thanks again for your kind help.
Spencer