People Searched For a Woman Missing for 3 Days. Then Some UTV Drivers Took a New Trail

The whole story is strange from top to bottom.

03:12

Photo by: Kare 11/YouTube

Janaki Jitchotvisut

By: Janaki Jitchotvisut

Jun 15, at 7:39am ET

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Do you have a regular route that you like to hit for your weekend rides? I know I do; in fact, I have a couple. They aren't always how we go out, but very frequently, we do. In my case, I'm talking about motorcycles on roads, but this question can easily apply to nearby trails that you might hit on your motorcycle, UTV, or ATV, too.

The benefit of driving or riding in a place you know is that you might notice something different this time around. And also, you already have some familiarity with it, which might make it easier to just relax and have fun since it isn't all new, and overloading your senses with information as you figure out which lines to take.

Two lifelong buddies who like to regularly hit the trails in northern Minnesota decided to take a different trail than usual, and their names are Adam Sandbeck and Mike Gravalin. While diverging from their usual route, they also opted to take a single UTV (Gravalin's Polaris RZR), instead of each driving their own like normal. And those two changes in the normal routine seem to have saved a missing woman's life.

As the Minnesota Star-Tribune tells the story, the riders took a different path than usual, and then noticed they were getting low on gas while still about 30 miles away from the RV park where they were camping.

But then, they found an unmarked maintenance road and thought it looked like a good shortcut, so they turned onto it; something they say they probably wouldn't have done if they'd been in two UTVs instead of just one. The unmarked road was full of rough terrain and potholes, so it was a bumpy ride made even more precarious by recent heavy rain in the area.

Just around one corner, they came upon an unexpected Chrysler Town & Country minivan, which appeared to completely unsuited for off-roading. They were immediately suspicious, and that was before they saw what appeared to be a human body lying in a puddle.

"I just remember saying to myself, ‘Oh my god, please don’t be a dead person,’” Sandbeck said. “She was completely submerged.”

Walking closer, they could only see a woman’s hand and parts of her face above the surface of the muddy water.

Then they heard her whisper: “Help me.”

Only later would they learn more about who this woman was, and is: Kathryn Woessner, a 68-year-old from Alexandria who had last been seen about six miles away from this spot, in Hubbard County, MN.

But none of that mattered at that moment; they just knew they had to get her out of there. She'd apparently been there for three days, including through the heavy rain that fell. While it's still not clear how she got there in the first place, what has been reported is that her minivan got stuck in the mud, and so she got out to try to free it. That's when she fell into the puddle and got stuck, describing the mud as being like quicksand. She found herself completely trapped and unable to get herself free. The mud was around two feet deep, and the sun, heat, and dehydration of being stuck there for days certainly didn't help matters.

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The two men called 911, and credit the Polaris RideCommand system in the RZR with providing exact coordinates so first responders could find them quickly. At the time, the two rescuers didn't know that she had been reported as a missing person, until they overheard the paramedics exclaiming that they thought it was her.

She's now thankfully recovering from the ordeal in a hospital in Brainerd. Investigators are still trying to figure out how she ended up where she was found, since it was around 100 miles from her home. But for now, the good news is that she's alive and recovering.