http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35777
Monday, November 24, 2003
Woman in subzero temps
'saved by angels'
Credits heavenly help for weeklong, miraculous survival in wilderness
How did Mischelle Hileman survive a weeklong ordeal in the Oregon wilderness, stranded in subzero temperatures without a winter coat or matches to start a fire?
She says two angels stayed with her each night, emanating warmth and light.
Hileman, 40, found herself in the canyon near Wallowa, Ore., following an elk-hunting accident a year ago. She recently revisited the area, now on artificial legs. Her frostbitten legs were amputated below the knees.
"I think we witnessed a true miracle," Wallowa County Sheriff Fred Steen told the Oregonian.
Nighttime temperatures dropped to at least 4 below zero in Alder Creek Canyon where Hileman lay injured for more than a week.
Hileman agrees her survival was miraculous. The former home health worker says that during her struggle to survive, two angels appeared and remained with her, radiating warmth and keeping her from dying of hypothermia.
"The best way to describe it was two golden bright lights, just in the shape of two people," she told the Oregonian. They appeared on the second night after she began to pray for help, they never spoke and disappeared at daylight, but they were with her every night until she was rescued, she said.
Hileman's ordeal began on a sunny 55-degree Sunday morning on Oct. 27, 2002, when her father, Benny Hileman, 62, pulled his pickup off a logging road 12 miles northeast of Wallowa to let her out. It was elk season, and Mischelle planned to hunt on foot for 45 minutes, then rendezvous with her father.
But, instead, Mischelle followed three elk into Alder Creek Canyon, where she fell. Suffering from a deep puncture wound to her left leg, she was unable to make it out of the canyon.
Within hours, a winter storm moved in.
More than 100 volunteers, friends and family members turned out to search for her. Most quickly became convinced that Hileman, who suffers from diabetes and asthma, had little chance of survival. The search was scaled back Oct. 31, but many refused to quit, and 27 people turned out the next day, spreading across the forest on horses and ATVs. She was finally found Nov. 3.
One year later:
Wilderness survivor Mischelle Hileman thankful to be alive
By Elane Dickenson of
the Wallowa County Chieftan
Thursday, November 27, 2003 -- Thanksgiving is more than just a word or a holiday for Mischelle Hileman and her family. Mischelle and her parents, Jan and Benny Hileman, who all live in rural Lostine, weren't sure last week if they'll be eating turkey or pizza on Thanksgiving Day, but they did know they would be together and it wouldn't be in a hospital.
"Last year they chopped my legs off on Thanksgiving eve," said Mischelle, not a person to mince words or evade the truth. All of Wallowa County knows the basic story of how Hileman miraculously survived a week in a rugged deep canyon north of Wallowa through temperatures that dipped below zero during elk season.
In fact, Hileman's story is known all over Oregon and far beyond. It's very rare that anyone survives an ordeal like hers as long as she did. Hileman continues to hear from people all over the country, and even recently received an e-mail from a well-wisher in South Africa.
On the year's anniversary of the day Mischelle was found alive by friends Bill Lehr and Marilyn Siefert, Nov. 3, the Hilemans took them out for a quiet celebratory dinner as a way of expressing in a small way the deep appreciation and friendship the family feels.
"If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be here," said Hileman, who observed her 40th birthday in October. A special late birthday present was being able to meet in person a group of 10 elk hunters from Milwaukee in the county during last year's search. They afterwards each pitched in $10 and sent her a $100 bill, telling Mischelle to buy something for herself, rather than putting it into her expense fund.
"It touched my heart, so much that I sat down and cried," recalled Jan Hileman.
The elk hunters, who call themselves the "Lloyd Road Gang" kept in touch and a long-distance friendship developed. The Hilemans were able to visit them at their elk camp, and they came down to the Lostine Tavern for a recent benefit taco feed for Mischelle. The taco feed was a joyous occasion, and the elk hunters plan to make it an annual reunion.
Though Mischelle Hileman still has her life, she lost both legs because of her ordeal, and is still learning to live with that reality. Hileman said while waiting to be found during that long week along Alder Creek, she knew without a doubt that her legs were frozen and she would probably lose them
Hileman suffered through excruciating pain during chemical whirlpool treatments after the double amputation at St. Luke's Medical Center in Boise, Idaho, and was given larger than normal doses of pain medication to help her endure, which she was able to tolerate only because of her size.
Mischelle was 6 feet two inches tall before the amputation, but now, on her second pair of artificial limbs, stands only 5' 11". Specialists felt shorter legs would give her greater stability and make it easier to walk. As the healing process continues, she will be fitted with two more pairs of legs.
Happy on her feet
"I always did want to be shorter," joked Hileman. Laughter is one way that the Hileman family has coped with Mischelle's situation ever since she was found alive, said her mother. Putting the prosthesis on every day is a frustrating process, but Hileman is more than a little happy just to be back on her own two feet. "Have you ever cooked bacon from a wheelchair," she asked. "Your eyes are right at the level of the splashing grease."
There are definitely some disadvantages to not having your own legs, she admits. Mischelle went deer hunting this year, but did her hunting from a stand because she isn't able to hike or navigate uneven ground yet. She loves to fish, but said her favorite fishing holes are now inaccessible.
"I love Wallowa Lake, but there's no easy place for a handicapped person to fish and have an easy place to go to the bathroom," she said.
Hileman has been through a lot in the past year, but her mother said she has remained positive and upbeat throughout. "She's always that way. She's amazing," said Jan Hileman proudly of her daughter.
Despite her loss, Mischelle Hileman said there's not a day she's not happy to be alive. She points to the things she is able to do now: walk, drive a car with hand controls, swim, spend time with her family and friends.
"The community has been incredible," she said of the outpouring of love and support, from pie auctions, to cards, messages and donations for medical expenses, that came her way after her survival.
She said she was "awestruck, dumbfounded " by the after-dark parade in Wallowa organized for her homecoming after 67 very long days in the hospital. Speaking slowly and carefully to try to express how she felt, Hileman said, "You don't think anybody notices you. And then for so many to acknowledge you is humbling."
Jan Hileman said she was very touched when announcer Lee Perkins said of her daughter in the county's Search and Rescue entry in the Chief Joseph Days parade, "Here comes our Mischelle." She noted, "That's how I feel, that she belongs to all of Wallowa County now."
Mischelle Hileman was not a person who lived in the limelight before her life-changing experience. She graduated from Wallowa High School in 1982, and ended up spending 10 years in John Day where she was the resident manager of an adult foster care home. Hileman has a special love of and rapport with senior citizens. When she moved back to the Wallowa area three years ago she became a frequent volunteer - and a favorite - at the Wallowa Senior Center.
Hileman was living with her grandmother Inez Spoelstra (now Guillory, since a Valentine's Day wedding), who was recovering from hip surgery at the time of that ill-fated elk hunting trip last year. An animal lover, Hileman had a job working for a company that transported pets all over the country.
Guardian angels
Hileman doesn't mind talking what she remembers about her life-changing experience in the woods, but says people have a hard time believing part of it.
"Do you believe that there are guardian angels?" she asked. "Well, believe it."
Hileman's experience started simply enough. On a day hunting trip on Oct. 27 with her father, they separated and Mischelle ended up following three elk into a deep canyon. She realized it was starting to get dark and it would be prudent of her to spend the night and walk out in the morning. Hileman planned to start a fire, but when the lighter she was sure she put in her fanny pack wasn't there, she toughed out a cold, wet night in the canyon.
In the morning she started to walk out, but slipped and fell into a hole, and two sticks punctured her leg from knee cap to ankle. "I hobbled, I crawled, I cried," recalled Mischelle. She had heard shots and knew people were looking for her, but no one answered her answering shots. She made a "nest" under a tree with boughs and branches not too far from the creek, and waited to be found.
About the second night the temperature plunged, and Mischelle first saw her angels.
"Nobody believes me, but I saw two angels - they were the most brilliant gold color you can imagine , one at my side and one at my feet," she said.
"No, I wasn't cold. ... They kept me warm." Hileman said the angels came every night and left every morning.
Hileman only remembers about four days of her ordeal altogether. She crawled to the creek every day to drink water - it froze solid in the frigid temperatures, but the same elk she chased into the canyon ran through the creek and broke the ice, and she was able to keep a hole open for drinking water.
At one time she remembers talking to a cougar. Cougar tracks were later found all over in the snow near her resting place.
On Sunday, Nov. 3, 2003, Hileman heard a voice yelling, "Mischelle, Mischelle." It was rescuer Bill Lehr, and remembers one of the first things she said: "What took you so long." Hileman and her parents have since joined Wallowa County's Search and Rescue Unit. Noting that the official search for her was scaled way back after the fourth day, Hileman had a ready answer when she was asked on her application what she had to offer the unit: "I'm going to be the person who's going to be pushing to keep looking beyond the fourth day, saying, 'never give up'."
Many people have called Mischelle Hileman's survival a true miracle, and she's the last to argue with them. She had a strong faith in God before, and her trial has only made it stronger.
"The good Lord's got a plan for everyone and doesn't give you more than you can handle, even though you think it's the end of the line," she said.
Lost woman says angels helped her survive ordeal
By Richard Cockle
The Oregonian
WALLOWA, Ore. — A year after an elk hunting accident left her stranded in a remote canyon for seven nights of subzero temperatures, Mischelle Hileman returned recently to the same pine-covered mountains where she almost died.
Sinking into a folding chair, she stretched her new artificial legs toward a crackling campfire and assured the hunters gathered around that she was doing fine.
"I don't need anything," said the 40-year-old Wallowa woman. "My feet are nice and warm. I'm comfy."
Both of Hileman's frostbitten legs were amputated below the knees a year ago this month. As she continues the long process of adjusting to artificial legs, many locals still struggle to understand how she survived.
"I think we witnessed a true miracle," said Wallowa County Sheriff Fred Steen.
Nighttime temperatures dropped to at least 4 below zero in Alder Creek Canyon where Hileman lay injured for more than a week. She was dressed lightly, without a winter coat or matches to build a fire.
Hileman believes her survival was miraculous. The former home health worker says that during her struggle to survive, two angels appeared and remained with her, radiating warmth and keeping her from dying of hypothermia.
"The best way to describe it was two golden bright lights, just in the shape of two people," she said. They appeared on the second night after she began to pray for help, they never spoke and disappeared at daylight, but they were with her every night until she was rescued, she said.
Ken Nash, a bishop of the LDS Church in Enterprise that Hileman attends, was among searchers. He thinks the conditions were too terrible for anyone to survive as long as Hileman did without shelter and a fire.
"It was a cold that would just suck through you, pull every bit of strength out of you," he said.
Charles Lyons, 50, professor of psychology at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, said Hileman's desperate condition and physical suffering — freezing, exhausted, starving and dehydrated — might have left her in a confused dream state. But Lyons suspects the strength of Hileman's religious faith and her single-minded determination were keys to her survival.
Hileman's ordeal began on a sunny 55-degree Sunday morning on Oct. 27, 2002, when her father, Benny Hileman, 62, pulled his pickup off a logging road 12 miles northeast of Wallowa to let her out. It was elk season, and Mischelle planned to hunt on foot along a fence line for 45 minutes, then rendezvous with her father at another road.
Mischelle deviated from the plan by following three elk into Alder Creek Canyon, where she fell. Suffering from a deep puncture wound to her left leg, she was unable to make it out of the canyon.
Within hours, a winter storm moved in. Four inches of snow obliterated any tracks rescuers might have been able to follow, and the snow soaked her trousers. Then an arctic front slammed the region with the coldest early season temperatures most people can remember.
More than 100 volunteers, friends and family members turned out to search for her. Most quickly became convinced that Hileman, who suffers from diabetes and asthma, had little chance of survival. The search was scaled back on Oct. 31, but many refused to quit, and 27 people turned out the next day, spreading across the forest on horses and ATVs.
Hileman, meanwhile, was foraging for berries, rose hips and moss and used a pocket knife to excavate shelters beneath fir trees where she could cover herself with boughs. After elk broke the 6-inch thick ice in Alder Creek, she was able to get a drink before it froze again.
"They were the same elk I'd been chasing that broke the ice," she said.
She fired all 11 rounds she had for her .30-06 rifle, but nobody heard the shots or her cries for help. At one point she removed her red fleece pullover to wave it at a helicopter passing overhead, but no one spotted her. She was found Nov. 3, three days after the official search ended.
Friends Bill Lehr, 45, and Marilyn Seifert, 43, both of Wallowa, worked their way into the canyon calling Hileman's name. Near the bottom, they came upon so many fresh cougar tracks that an alarmed Lehr drew his handgun. Moments later, he heard Hileman's voice float up to him. "When we got there, she was kind of half on the ice and half on the bank," said Lehr. "She thought that was her last trip to get water. She was about done in."
An Oregon National Guard helicopter flew her to a hospital in Boise, where she began a new ordeal. Her legs were amputated Nov. 26, more than three weeks after her arrival in Boise. She now wears the second of what probably will be six pairs of prosthetic legs before she is properly fitted.
Hileman's determination to survive touched many of those who searched for her.
"Mischelle has given us a motto of 'Never Give Up,' " said Matt Marmor of the Wallowa County sheriff's department search and rescue unit.