Four Massachusetts National Guardsmen are being hailed as heroes after they saved a stranded 87-year-old woman.
The elderly woman spent two days stuck in a hot car on a remote road in New Jersey.
Jeannette Haskins was ready to give up, when those soldiers came to her rescue.
“I had resolved the fact that I was going to die,” Haskins said.
Last weekend, while driving from Little Egg Harbor to Baltimore, she somehow got stuck on a remote trail in the woods used by tanks at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.
“I really don’t have any idea how I ended up there,” Haskins said. “I wasn’t really concerned. I thought somebody would find me and help me to get out.”
Haskins was traveling with her cat. She had no food or water and her smartphone was dead. Two days passed and no one came.
“It was so hot,” Haskins said. “It was really, really a nightmare.”
She grew dehydrated and started hallucinating.
“I’d get out of the car, I thought I saw a car coming, I’d blow the horn and I’d wave and holler, and then I’d realize there wasn’t anything there, and I knew that a bad sign,” Haskins said. “We had a heavy rain storm Monday morning, and I had some bowls I brought to feed my cat. I set those out on the hood and got water in those and so I drank those, that’s the only water I had. I was resigned to the fact by Monday that I wasn’t going to get out. And right after that was when the men came.”
The men, four Army National Guardsmen from Massachusetts, were on a training mission at the military base. They stumbled upon Haskins’ car, gave her water and oxygen, and got her help.
“I passed out in the car,” Haskins said. “And I came to and there were these men’s faces. It was the best thing that ever happened. We have so much to be grateful to them for. I’m convinced if they hadn’t found me I wouldn’t be here today.”
Haskins is now recovering from dehydration, but she is expected to be OK.
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