Friends Kimberly Pushard and Angela Bussel were found alive and huddled together for warmth five days after disappearing during a trip to the Maine Mall, where they’d hoped to go bowling.
The pair of women — both of whom have “intellectual disabilities” — set out on the 50-mile trek on Feb. 21, but they quickly became disoriented and accidentally ended up in Massachusetts, according to New Hampshire State Police. Despite help from authorities and family members, Pushard and Bussel could not find their way back home, so they continued to drive.
Their days-long journey took them hundreds of miles out of the way and into Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and then back to Maine. Authorities, in the meantime, worked to track their location through their cellphones before they eventually lost power.
Family members reported the women missing on Wednesday around 1 a.m., according to the Press Herald. The same day, Pushard’s cell phone pinged for a final time just after midnight near Candia and Raymond in New Hampshire.
Surveillance video recorded a few hours later on Wednesday showed the pair fueling up at a gas station in Springfield before their Jeep was spotted traveling south toward Enfield, Maine.
For days, authorities from several law enforcement agencies searched by both land and sky for the missing women, but to no avail. That’s because, at some point on Wednesday, the women turned off the Morrison Ridge Road onto a remote snowmobile trail, the Press Herald reported. After driving about 10 miles, their vehicle veered off course and rolled half a mile into the woods, where the car got stuck in the snow.
By Saturday, their jeep had run out of gas, leaving the women without heat as temperatures dropped to -15 degrees. The next morning, a game warden told the Press Herald that “dumb luck” led him to an area search teams had not yet covered, where he stumbled upon their snow-covered Jeep.
“Those things don’t always happen by chance,” warden Brad Richard told the outlet. “I think [it] kind of was meant to be.”
Both women returned home Sunday afternoon and continue to recover, family said.