The San Gabriel Valley Tribune
PASADENA, Calif. — Members of a team that rescued a driver whose pickup truck fell 350 feet over a mountain road paid the woman a hospital visit Wednesday.
Reserve Deputies Jason Johnson, Cyndy Moyneur, and Janet Henderson met the Juniper Hills woman at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena.
The woman was reported missing by her husband March 25. The Montrose Search and Rescue Team found her injured March 26 in the Angeles National Forest.
“If they would not have found me, I would not have survived,” the woman said during her meeting with the deputies.
Once she is able to, she said she wants to go back with the members of the Montrose Search and Rescue Team to look first hand at the location.
Deputies said the woman’s condition has improved to the point that she will soon be transferred to another hospital for more follow up care.
The woman was driving on Angeles Forest Highway near mile marker 10.47 when she hit ice on the road, according to deputies. Her white Ford pickup slid off the road, rolled over down a rugged hillside and came to rest 350 feet over the edge.
The woman remembered driving on the highway and hitting ice on the road.
She said she attempted to correct her steering but knew she was headed for the edge. She said she could not stop the pickup truck. It rolled over the edge, turned over onto its roof and slid down the hillside.
The pickup landed on its wheels at the bottom of the canyon. The woman believed her vehicle might catch fire and crawled out of the passenger compartment.
The Montrose Search and Rescue Team along with Antelope Valley Search and Rescue started searching for the missing woman about 7 a.m. March 26. At about 9:30 a.m., Reserve Deputy Johnson found recent tire marks in the snow which led up and over the snow-covered berm. He looked over the cliff and saw a white Ford pickup.
Johnson maneuvered his way down the snow-covered hillside and saw the injured woman who was lying in the snow outside the pickup. Deputies said she was in critical condition.
Johnson gave medical aid. Reserve Deputies Moyneur and Robert Sheedy and paramedics with sheriff’s Air 5 arrived and treated the woman who was then flown to Huntington Hospital.
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