An Oregon woman who accidentally drove her SUV off a 200-foot California cliff detailed how she survived for a week while stranded on a remote beach.
A 23-year-old Oregon woman who had been missing since July 6 was found Friday after her car was spotted over a cliff on Highway 1 near Big Sur, and according to the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office. Angela Hernandez was reportedly driving her white 2011 Jeep Patriot from Oregon to Southern California to visit her family and when she disappeared July 6, officials said. The California Highway Patrol conducted a search of the Nacimiento-Fergusson Road area and the Big Sur coastline with an H70 helicopter on Thursday. Hernandez was found in that location Friday night.
SFGate.com reported footage from businesses along Highway 1 helped San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office investigators determine Hernandez drove as far south as the Carmel area on July 6, hours after she texted she was leaving Half Moon Bay, officials and Hernandez’s sister said Thursday. Before deputies reviewed surveillance video, Hernandez’s last known whereabouts were in a parking lot behind a Safeway in Half Moon Bay. She texted her sister the morning of July 6 that she had slept there the night before and was getting back on the road, authorities said.
On July 6, Angela Hernandez, 23, was passing through Big Sur, California, when a small animal darted in front of her, causing her to swerve. The area where Hernandez swerved has no shoulder, California Highway Patrol Public Information Officer Jessica Madueno said, causing her vehicle to plunge off the side of the cliff.
In a Facebook post about the ordeal, Hernandez wrote that she blacked out after the crash and when she came to, her smashed vehicle was filling with water. “I was still in my car and I could feel water rising over my knees. My head hurt and when I touched it, I found blood on my hands,” Hernandez wrote. “I swam to the shore and fell asleep for an unknown amount of time.”
Injured but able walk, Hernandez said she patrolled the beach — a desolate stretch of rocks and sand covered by fog and nearly invisible to drivers hundreds of feet above — and climbed rocks looking for another person while screaming for help. Hernandez said on or around the third day she was stuck on the beach, Angela began to feel the effects of dehydration. Hernandez found a 10-inch radiator hose to siphon off water from a nearby natural spring, Madueno said. Hernandez said during the day she would climb a rock and call out to far-off cars she could see for help.
“I could see cars driving across the cliff and felt like if I could yell just loud enough, that one could hear or see me. That’s all it would take to make it back to my family,” Hernandez wrote. “Just one person noticing me. “After a week of walking the beach, avoiding hot rocks, and calling out to cars in the distance for help, her prayers were finally answered.Chad and Chelsea Moore were hiking along the beach when they heard Hernandez’s cries for help. “I heard a faint cry for help, and I turned and we saw Angela standing in the rocks,” Chelsea Moore said.
“She said she woke up that morning and knew it was going to be a good day, and I think I started crying.” Chad Moore stayed with Hernandez while Chelsea Moore ran to get help. When rescue teams arrived, they had to hoist Hernandez up using ropes before airlifting her to the hospital, where doctors discovered she suffered a brain hemorrhage, fractured ribs, a collapsed lung, broken collar bones & ruptured blood vessels. https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article214953875.html
Despite the extent of her injuries, Hernandez said is “sitting here in the hospital, laughing with my sister until she makes broken bones hurt. “Also I’ve experienced something so unique and terrifying that I can’t imagine there isn’t a bigger purpose for me in this life,” she wrote. “I don’t know, you guys, life is incredible.”
Miracles Happen!!!
Meet Mighty Miss Maya.
Mighty Miss Maya is a four year old girl from Traverse City with cerebral palsy– and she’s been waiting her whole life to take her first steps. After being told she’s likely to never walk, Mighty Miss Maya took her first steps ever and keeps taking more.
A 4-year-old girl from Traverse City with cerebral palsy beamed with excitement as she walked independently for the first time. “I’m walking, yes!,” she shouted while taking her first steps in a viral video that was posted by her family. It was the first time that Maya Tisdale walked on her own since being diagnosed with cerebral palsy before turning 2 years old.
“I even took a big step,” she said.
Ann Tisdale, Maya’s mother, said she didn’t expect Maya to do her exercises without her cane and started walking on Saturday when she started recording. Maya practices her exercises daily for physical therapy.
First Steps – 4 years, 10 months ️ ️️ I can’t even put into words how we are feeling. Nothing seems to fit the enormity of this moment for us. We are beyond proud of our Mighty Girl. #sdrchangeslives #beemighty #impossibleisnothing #firststeps #cerebralpalsy
“We were practicing her sit-to-stand (exercise) and she had never actually done that without her cane, so I got the video camera out,” Ann Tisdale said. “I called my husband to the room so he could watch her do that, and he was the one who prompted her to take a step, and she just started doing it, so was pretty amazing because she did 2 new things.”
Tisdale said her family was surprised about Maya’s improvements.
“We were really just in shock because we didn’t think that it would happen for a long time, if ever, until seeing her doing it,” Tisdale said. “Our jaws were on the floor and our eyes were super big. We were just really excited, we didn’t want to start screaming and crying because we wanted her to keep practicing.”
Maya Tisdale was born in 2013 as a micro preemie, weighing 1 pound and 10 ounces. According to the family’s website, Maya spent 87 days in the hospital before she could come home. However, when she did come home, Ann Tisdale noticed that her daughter wasn’t doing any of her motor skills, like sitting up and walking properly.
Maya was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with spastic diplegia cerebral palsy, which is a type of cerebral palsy that causes the muscles in the hips, legs and feet to be tight or spastic. Despite the diagnosis, Tisdale said, Maya has always remained strong and independent.
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“She’s a very independent kid, and she’s a very ‘I can do it’ kid,” Tisdale said.
“Having two older brothers, she wants to do what they’re doing and she sees that they do everything on their own and she just wants to be like them.”
In May, her family traveled to Missouri where Maya underwent surgery with Dr. T.S. Park, one of the nation’s leading pediatric neurosurgeons and a pioneer of selective dorsal rhizotomy surgery, according to the family’s website. The surgery was intended to reduce Maya’s spasticity and give her the ability to live with less pain and greater mobility.
“There are other hospitals, but St. Louis Children’s Hospital is considered the best for this surgery and Dr. Park has pioneered a different technique for this surgery. We wanted to go where we felt she would have the best team.”
Tisdale said that Maya, who has been given the name Mighty Miss Maya because of her strength, is still determined to permanently walk independently one day.”She practices every day,” Tisdale said. “Cerebral palsy, she still has that. It’s not something that goes away because you’re walking on your own. She’s still taking steps and getting stronger. Hopefully, she’ll be walking independently at some point.” ️ 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=136&v=yQUlMlwXEgg