Two friends riding all-terrain vehicles through a wooded area in northern Minnesota on June 6 discovered a 68-year-old woman trapped for days in a mud puddle, according to the men and local authorities.
Adam Sandbeck and Mike Gravalin were riding near Backus and Hackensack, about 180 miles north of Minneapolis, when they came across a wooded area they had passed for years but never explored. On that day, Gravalin said, they decided to drive deeper into the woods.
“We came across this van in the middle of nowhere that has no real off-road capabilities to get there, but it somehow did,” Gravalin told KARE11.
Approaching the van, Sandbeck recalled seeing a body in the puddle next to it. “We could see that there was a body in the puddle next to the van, and then that’s when it got real,” Sandbeck said, according to KARE11. “When we walked up, we thought she was dead. We thought it was just a body, and then she whispered, ‘Help me,’ and it scared the crap out of me.”
The woman was Kathryn Woessner, 68. Sandbeck said only part of her face was visible above the surface. “All you could see was just the round part of her face, like her mouth, her lips. You couldn’t even see her ears. It was all submerged,” he said.
Woessner told the men she had been trapped in the puddle for several days, according to Sandbeck and Gravalin. She said her vehicle had become stuck, and while trying to get around it she slipped and fell into the puddle — which she described as “like quicksand” — and could not get out. The puddle was about 2 feet deep, ABC News reported.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office had previously issued an endangered missing person alert for Woessner, who was last seen on June 3. The alert stated that she did not have personal belongings with her and had medical conditions that raised safety concerns.
The two men pulled Woessner from the mud in less than half an hour and called 911. Paramedics transported her to a hospital, where local officials said she was expected to make a full recovery.
Gravalin noted that the area had been flooded after a recent storm. “We’ve driven past it for the last eight years and never went down,” he said. Sandbeck added, according to KARE11, that he believed the discovery was guided by something beyond coincidence.
“We’re just two guys that were out there riding, enjoying the day together, making fun of each other all day long like we always do, like buddies, but I have no doubt the hand of God was there guiding us there,” Sandbeck said. “Because that trail that we found her on, we actually drove past it.”