The barrage of negative news dominating the headlines has been putting a damper on everyone’s mood. So, when a piece of good news pops out from a sea of distressing news events, it is a breath of fresh air, a much-needed respite from the gloomy and dismal news that has sapped our energy and zest for life in recent months.
The news about a teenager from Washington is one of those feel-good news stories that is worth your while.
The rescue team found Giovanna Fauda,18, alive in the woods of the Cascade Mountains after she disappeared for nine days.
Based on a police report, the authorities initially found the off the wall incident suspicious, because her cellphone was missing, and yet her purse, bible and other stuff were tucked away inside the car.
The vehicle was found with an empty gas tank, which made the authorities speculate that the teenager ran out of fuel 10 miles from the gas station, prompting her to wander off to look for the nearest filling station to gas up.
As seen on a surveillance footage, Fuda visited a shop east of Index on the day she disappeared, the 24th of July. The following day, her 2008 Toyota Corolla was seen unmanned on the highway next to Stevens Pass which prompted the authorities to launch a search and rescue operation in the area.
While the detectives perused over surveillance video for hours on end, hundreds of volunteers relentlessly conducted ground search and rescue operations to locate her.
But it wasn’t an easy feat, as the vast search area was blanketed by dense bushes and trees, making it futile to use a helicopter for a swift search operation. Also, the team failed to track down the teen’s cellphone’s GPS, as the area is inaccessible to cell sites
With the help of a bloodhound, the search and rescue workers continued to rake through the whole area in full force until finally, they found some items that belonged to the teen, her notebook, clothes, and shoes, all strewed together alongside a creek. But the teen was still nowhere in sight. Fortunately, the rescue team finally found her responsive but incoherent two miles up an extremely precipitous ravine.
According to Ryan Abbot, King County sheriff’s spokesman, Fauda might have survived by drinking water from a nearby creek, as they found her without food in the woods, NBC News reports. But a family friend, Jeff White, told a local news station that she survived by eating berries sprouting from trees and bushes.
Authorities are still puzzled as to how she deviated from the straight road and ended up finding herself in the woods. Nevertheless, regardless of the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, everyone is relieved that the incident had a happy ending. Fuda is reunited with her family and is in stable condition after being treated at a local hospital.
Abbot told reporters that they consider the incident a miracle and are thrilled the teenager made it out okay after she went missing for nine days in the forest.
The idea of having to leave her dying in the woods all by herself brought so much anguish for the rescue team, but thankfully this never happened as they found her, by some miracle, on the very last day of the search operation.