A missing woman who had not been seen for three days was rescued by two men who discovered her buried in a muddy 'quicksand' puddle a hundred miles from home.
Kathryn Woessner, 68, was last seen on June 3 before vanishing from Akeley, Minnesota, leaving her family and friends concerned. Three days later, friends Adam Sandbeck and Mike Gravalin ventured out on their all-terrain vehicles in Minneapolis - more than three hours from where she lives.
They found her in the puddle off the beaten path after taking that route at the spur of the moment. The explorers were surprised to see a van parked in the middle of nowhere, and questioned if the vehicle had the off-road capability to handle the challenging path they were on.
But moments later they discovered what they thought was a dead body, and all they could see at first was a female's head with the rest of her body submerged. On closer inspection, they found she was alive after she whispered to them - but had to act fast with Ms Woessner in 'really bad shape'. They worked together to pull her out of the sand and called emergency services.
She was later taken to hospital and authorities are still investigating how the vulnerable woman got so far from her home and ended up on the remote trail.
The rescuers spoke to KARE about their find and said: 'We could see that there was a body in the puddle next to the van, and then that's when it got real,' Mr Sandbeck said.
'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 c**p out of me! She said it was like quicksand, and she couldn't get out, she said she had been stuck forever.'
'My gut tells me if we didn't drive through that trail, this would be a whole different outcome for Kathryn. There's no doubt in my mind … this was the hand of God directing us to her, because there's no reason why we would have ever gone down these little trails.'
'We were supposed to be there. This was the last-ditch effort to save this woman's life.'
'If there are two positives I can take away from this and promote it would be… God is real…. and how important rural volunteers of the fire department and paramedics agencies are to local areas. The real heroes are those people,' he added.
He shared his story on social media, writing that the pals are now planning to take the original ride they had scheduled this weekend.
The Douglas County Sheriff's Office later confirmed that Ms Woessner was the woman the men found.
