Lost Family Found, Safe And Sound

Rescued After Being Stuck In Snowy Mountains In Oregon For 17 Days

(CBS/AP) 
"I'm so proud of my family. They stuck together. They didn't lose it," said a bearded Higginbotham.

The family decided they had to save themselves. Describing to The Early Show how he and his wife took a tent and supplies, hoping to hike out and find hope, Peter Stivers said, "She had a couple of cans of food and a jar of peanut butter and a thing of potatoes and can of beans."

On Tuesday morning, a worker from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management found Stivers, 29, and Hill-Stivers, 31. The worker told the family Tuesday morning that he had a premonition he'd find them safe and sound, Gonzales reports.

Later, rescue workers in a helicopter made contact with the other four, said Sgt. David Marshall, spokesman for the Douglas County Sheriff's Department. Snow machines were sent to pick them up.

Even then, getting out wasn't easy.

"There was a short window," Elbert Higginbotham said of the family's helicopter rescue. "It was just enough time to land the one ship and dump the medic and get back out as the weather was closing in on the helicopter."

The RV was found near an old airstrip about 14 miles west of Glendale, a town of fewer than 900 people along Interstate 5, about 80 miles north of the California border

After the family was reported missing, rescue teams from Oregon and California scoured the two closest routes from Ashland to the coast. But police didn't know exactly where they had been heading, and they eventually called off the search when there were no leads.

At the time, police said family members did not answer calls to their cell phones, and the bank accounts of all four adults had not been touched since March 4.

The area is too remote for cell phone service.

During the initial search, authorities focused on the U.S. 199 corridor south from Grants Pass, a well-traveled route across the Coast Range, rather than narrow and windy back roads that are more direct routes.

Sgt. Jim Alderman, spokesman for the police department in the city of Ashland, said it was a puzzle why the family chose their route.

"We don't know why they went the way they did," he said. "We don't know why they were up there where they were."

The Stivers family has lived in Ashland for several years but rarely traveled, said Andi Black, general manager at DJ's Video in Ashland where Hill-Stivers worked.

"She's just super-responsible," Black said. "So we knew something was wrong ... this is totally unlike her."

"I knew we were going to hear something eventually," said Char Seward, a close friend and co-worker of Marlo Hill-Stivers. "But after two weeks and two days of not hearing something, it was exhausting."