A Utah couple ended up saving a woman’s life after she became trapped in her crashed car for two days.
The couple was reportedly taking pictures at American Fork Canyon when they heard the woman crying for help nearby. Spencer Dreyden and his girlfriend, Cleo, couldn’t see the car at first so they began shouting questions at the woman. Heather Blackwelder shouted directions back at them until they finally found her.
Two days earlier, 29-year-old Blackwelder was driving when her car went through a guardrail and “several hundred feet down the side of the mountain,” according to a Utah County Sheriff’s Office press release. “The terrain in that area is very steep and densely wooded.” The cause of the crash was not immediately known.
Dreyden told KSTU that it was a “miracle” that Blackwelder was in good enough shape to yell for help.
“From the distance of where the road was, and the condition that the car was in, it just, it seemed like she should have been way more injured than that,” he said. “She wasn’t punctured at all by any of the metal in the car or anything like that. She just had, what I believed to be bones that were broken from being tumbled around.”
Blackwelder suffered broken bones in the crash but her injuries were not life threatening.
Sgt. Spencer Cannon said that it was unlikely that the woman would’ve been found had it not been for the couple.
“Being stuck there, being in an area where nobody driving by in a car, riding by on a motorcycle or riding by on a bicycle would have seen her–very unlikely that anybody driving or riding a bike would have heard her, and these folks that did find her: It was just really, really fortunate that they heard her in the first place and were able to work their way down to where she was,” he said.
Speaking to KSL, Cannon reiterated that the situation would have been entirely different it wasn’t for Dreyden and his girlfriend.
“It could literally have been years before she was found. (The area) is not a hiking trail, it’s not along a trail. It has thick trees and is on the side of the mountain. The car could have been well rusted before she was found.”
Many readers praised Dreyden and his girlfriend for saving the woman.
“Praise God. Thank God you were there to hear her and help,” one Mad World News reader commented on the site’s Facebook page.
“Glad the story ended well. Thank you for being there to help,” another wrote.
“God sent this couple to find her . Glad she is ok . Bless the couple that found her,” another added.