Woman Survives 8 Days At Bottom Of Ravine
Wash. State Woman, 33, In Hospital "Fighting For Her Life" After Auto Crash
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Play CBS Video Video 'Miracle' Survivor Story Hannah Storm speaks with Tom Ryder, whose wife, Tanya, survived eight days in a Seattle-area ravine without any food or water while authorities questioned him about her disappearance.
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Video Woman Survives 8 Days In Car A missing Seattle woman was rescued after being trapped in her car for eight days. Alison Harmelin reports.
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Washington State troopers inspect the scene of the accident that left 33-year-old Tanya Rider and her car into the bottom of a ravine alongside Highway 169 near Renton, Wash., where she was trapped for eight days until being found alive Sept. 27, 2007. (AP/Post-Intelligencer/J. Trujillo)
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The interior of the Honda Element in which Tanya Rider, 33, was trapped for eight days in a steep ravine southeast of Renton, Wash., before being found alive by state troopers, Sept. 27, 2007, beneath a tangle of bushes. (AP/Post-Intelligencer/J. Trujillo)
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A firefighter uses a rope to climb back out of the ravine near Renton, Wash., where police on Sept. 27, 2007, found Tanya Rider - alive, but very weak - eight days after she disappeared while driving home from an overnight shift at a local store. (AP/The Times/C.J. Taylor)
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Tanya Rider, 33, responded to her name when her car was found along a highway in suburban Seattle, State Patrol Sgt. Dave Divis said.
King County sheriff's investigators used a cell phone signal to recheck a segment of the highway, State Patrol spokesman Jeff Merrill said. On Thursday afternoon, they noticed some matted brush, and below it they found her Honda Element, smashed on its side.
"She looks very pale, very dehydrated. She didn't have a lot of cuts but had difficulty breathing," Merrill said.
Rider was taken to Harborview Medical Center, where she was in critical condition, hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg-Hanson said. Her husband, Tom Rider, said she was "fighting for her life," suffering from kidney failure and sores from lying in the same position for a week.
"She's a fighter and she's fought for eight days. Now she has to fight more," Tom Rider said Friday on CBS News' The Early Show.
I'd like to invite everybody to pray, because if there was never evidence of a miracle before...
husband Tom RyderTanya Rider, of Maple Valley, Wash., was last seen Sept. 19 after leaving her shift at a Fred Meyer grocery store in Bellevue.
Her car tumbled about 20 feet down the ravine and lay buried below heavy brush and blackberry bushes. Rescuers had to cut the roof off to get her out.
Tom Ryder says he tried to report her as missing for days, but he was sent from one county to another, and then was told his wife didn't fit the criteria of a missing person. So he papered the town with her pictures.
"I understand she went missing on the 19th but that she was not actually reported missing until the 23rd by the family," asked Storm.
"That's false," replied Rider.
Rider said he was sitting down to take a lie-detector test at the sheriff's office so officers could exclude him as a suspect in his wife's disappearance when officers told him the car had been found.
"I wanted to make sure they weren't focusing on me, that they were focusing on Tanya," he said.
Tom Rider had offered a $25,000 reward for any information leading to his wife's return.
"I'd like to invite everybody to pray, because if there was never evidence of a miracle before, eight days without food and water, and to even be having a chance to fight for her life upstairs right now, that has to give some hope to the world," he told Storm.
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