Grandmother lost in wilderness for 13 days finally describes ordeal
04:46 PM PDT on Tuesday, October 16, 2007
For 13 days, Doris Anderson was lost in Oregon's wilderness as her family feared the worst. On Tuesday, she shared her story of survival with the public for the first time.
Anderson told KGW she thinks she is a miracle and she knows rescuers got to her in the nick of time.
“I was amazed. I think I was getting pretty weak by then. They came just in time to save me,” she said.
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The last thing Anderson remembers before the ordeal began was standing by the truck with her husband after he broke his arm during a hunting expedition in the Wallowa Mountains.
She went for help.
“I got lost somewhere. I drank water out of creeks and I ate berries...trying to get back to where my husband was,” Anderson said.
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In the meantime, her husband Harold was trying to wait patiently for any sign of his wife as he endured the interrogation of a lifetime.
“I never ever have been questioned like that in my whole life,” he told KGW.
He said he understands investigators had no choice but to consider him a potential suspect.
“What one said one time is, ‘Dumped her out in the wilderness’...we're all buddies now...I will never ever forget any of them,” Harold Anderson said.
Word Doris was alive down by a creek in the Eagle Cap wilderness couldn't come soon enough for Anderson’s family, who was getting ready to plan her memorial.
Doris Anderson said she's physically stronger now, with no aches or pains, and she's happy to report she has regained most of her memory. She describes herself as being in good health.
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And she will never forget what it felt like to be lost for so long.
“I was scared, but I had to keep on going. I couldn't give up,” she said. “I have faith in God...prayer, that's the reason I was found,” she said.
Now that their prayers have been answered, husband and wife agree on one thing.
“No more hunting, no,” Harold Anderson said. “I’m spending time with my wife until I'm gone from this earth."
Doris Anderson was found in the beginning of September, hypothermic and incoherent. Searchers believe she was just hours from dying.
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