'She's a fighter,' sheriff says of Portland woman who survived 250-foot plunge over Big Sur cliffs
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It began as a scenic drive through Big Sur. The next thing Angela Hernandez knew, she and her Jeep were plunging 250 feet off the California coast into the Pacific Ocean.
It would be seven days until anyone saw or heard from the 23-year-old Portlander again.
"The only thing I really remember after that was waking up," Hernandez wrote Sunday on Facebook of her July 6 crash which was a result of her swerving to avoid hitting a small animal. "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 suffered from a brain hemorrhage, four fractured ribs, broken collar bones and a collapsed lung, she wrote from her hospital bed.
The events after her fall seemed to unfold quickly.
Hernandez found a multi-purpose tool in her car and used it to break open the driver's-side window. Despite multiple injuries, she was able to escape the car and swim to shore.
She was surrounded by ocean and rocks, Hernandez recalled. The roof of her Jeep, which had washed up onshore, was missing. So were her shoes.
"The next few days kind of became a blur," she wrote. "I'd walk up and down the beach in search of another human being. I'd climb on rocks to avoid the sharp sand, walk along the shore to avoid the hot rocks, and air wrestle tiny crabs."
But she couldn't get back up the road.
About three days in, by Hernandez's account, the effects of dehydration began setting in.
She found a 10-inch-long black hose in the wreckage of her car and stowed it away until stumbling across what she described as a fresh patch of moss dripping with fresh water that she then collected using the tube.
"Every day, this became my ritual," she wrote. "I'd walk up and down the beach looking for new high grounds, screaming 'help' at the top of my lungs, and collecting water falling from the top of the cliffs. Every night, I'd find the highest point I could climb up to and find somewhere to fall asleep before the tide would rise. Every morning, I'd wake up soaked in sea mist and watch the sun rise."
Hernandez said even though the days didn't get easier, they did get more predictable.
She passed the time by replaying old songs in her head, dreaming of food and trying to imagine the face of the person who would find her.
On Friday afternoon, Hernandez saw a woman walking down the beach. She wondered if she was a dream.
But Chelsea Moore, with her husband, Chad, following, were anything but a mirage.
"I couldn't believe that they were even real," Hernandez wrote on Facebook. "I couldn't believe that we had finally found each other."
The husband and wife, who became overnight heroes, told KOIN (6) they were looking for a place to fish when they instead found an abandoned Jeep, a medal and a concert poster Hernandez's sister gave her.
When they found Hernandez, Chad gave her fresh water while Chelsea ran to find help.
A rescue team was soon by Hernandez's side. They carried her up the cliff where a helicopter took her to a nearby hospital to treat injuries from her crash and intense sunburn.
"I think most people in that situation wouldn't have lasted that long, but she's a fighter and she had the will to live," Monterey County Sheriff Steve Bernal said during a press conference Monday.
Bernal said rescue teams had attempted to find Hernandez using air and ground searches and by tracking her phone. They had to halt air operations Thursday because of heavy fog.
Hernandez posted photos of her car. The white Jeep, sitting upright on the rocky shore, was battered on all sides.
Hernandez's sister set up a GoFundMe account Friday to help pay for medical bills.
As of early Monday afternoon, the account raised $5,135 of its $10,000 goal.
But at the end of the day, none of the injuries mattered, Hernandez wrote on Facebook.
"I feel like I have everything I've ever wanted," she said. "I'm sitting here in the hospital, laughing with my sister until she makes broken bones hurt. I've met some of the most beautiful human beings that I think I'll ever meet in my entire life. I've experienced something so unique and terrifying and me that I can't imagine that there isn't a bigger purpose for me in this life. I don't know, you guys, life is incredible."
end quote from:
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2018/07/shes_a_fighter_sheriff_says_of.html
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