Woman Stranded For 17 Hours After Crash, Reunites With Good Samaritans Who Saved Her

A Cleveland woman, who survived for 17 hours in a ravine after a car crash in rural Osage County, reunited Sunday with the two Good Samaritans who saved her.

“I appreciate you guys so much. I could never thank you enough. Never,” Linda Cravens said while hugging the two men who saved her.

The last time Linda Cravens saw Jeff Chambers and Montie Bishop, it was early Friday morning and she was cold and wet from being outside all night in the pouring rain.

“I never was so happy two see to people in my life,” she said “I know they were complete strangers, but I was so happy to see them. And I just knew they were good people. I just knew.”

Bishop and Chambers recalled the moment after finding Cravens.

“You were shaking like a leaf when we got there,” Bishop said. “That was the only think I could think of was putting you in the truck where the heat was going real good.”

10/14/16 Related Story: Osage County Woman’s Faith Kept Her Going For 17 Hours After Crash

Linda was also in excruciating pain after crushing her ankle in that car crash 17 hours earlier.

“It was very real at the time, but now it seems like it was just a bad dream,” Cravens said.

Trees covered the ravine where Linda's car landed making it nearly impossible for anyone to see her. 

She didn't have her phone and was hurt so badly, she wrote a note to her family, just in case.

“Saying 'If I die before somebody finds me, tell my husband and my daughter I love them,’” she recalled.

But Cravens found the strength to crawl up the steep embankment in the dark.

“I said, 'you know, in the name of Jesus, I need some supernatural strength here, and he gave it to me,’” she said.

Cravens wasn't rescued until Chambers and Bishop headed to work around 4:30 Friday morning.            

“It could have turned out a whole lot different, but I'm glad it turned out the way it did,” Bishop said.

The light from a little flashlight is how the two men spotted Cravens as she waved it from the embankment. The flashlight is the same one her husband gave her to carry in her purse just three weeks ago. 

“Like I told Jeff, I said, ' there's something going on down here and we need to find out what it is.' I'm just glad you were all right, that's the main thing,” Bishop said. 

“If you hadn't have stopped, I might have lost her,” Cravens' husband, Andy, said. “I just appreciate you guys, you gave me my wife back.” 

Chambers and Bishop said they did what anyone should do – they stopped and helped a person who needed it.

“If we had done this for one person, it might be a chain reaction and it might go on to [help] somebody else,” Chambers said.

A hope that could end up saving someone else’s life too. 

“You prayed to God for somebody to find you, and your prayers were answered,” Chambers said to Cravens.

“I'm just so thankful. They're just my guardian angels. He just sent them to me. He did,” she said. 

Cravens will go in for ankle surgery next week after the swelling in her leg goes down.