68-Year-Old Woman Found Alive After Week In SUV Buried In Snow

BUTTE MEADOWS, CA — Paula Beth James is a tough one.

The Jan. 9 disappearance of the 68-year-old Oroville, California, woman prompted a Silver Alert by the Butte County Sheriff’s Office, which said she may have become disoriented due to dementia.

The sheriff’s office searched for James for 100 hours in the mountains 200 miles northeast of San Francisco, on snowmobiles and from the air. Days passed without a trace of James.

Dan Newman, a member of the Butte County Search and Rescue team, knew the clock was ticking on finding James.

“Her tracks were covered in snow,” he told news station KCRA. “We knew if we were going to find her and find her alive, we were going to have to do it really quickly.”

Laura Powell, too, was losing hope her stepmother would be found alive. “It felt like we were doomed,” she told news station KTXL.

Then, on Wednesday, helicopter pilots saw a hopeful sign — an SUV buried in the snow about 150 yards off the road that perhaps was James’ 2018 Toyota 4Runner.

“It really is a needle in a haystack,” Newman told KCRA. “The vehicle had a lot of snow on top. On top of that, being a silver car, it doesn’t really have any contrast against the snow.”

The helicopter set down in a clearing near a thicket of trees, and the two pilots aboard hiked to the snowbound SUV. It was James’ 4Runner. And she was alive.

Authorities aren’t sure if her vehicle was buried in the snow the entire time she was missing, but said her skin was cold to the touch when the rescuers found her. The temperatures were in the low 30s, below freezing, according to the National Weather Service.

A rescue team in Sno-Cats — tracked vehicles specially designed to trudge through heavy snow — met the pilots and took James to a staging area, where paramedics were waiting to take her to Enloe Medical Center in Chico, California.

Newman told KCRA that James was “in good spirits” and “very excited to see us.”

“And we were just as excited to see her,” he said.

So, too, were worried family members.

“We’re told she’s in good spirits, her ornery self,” niece Jennifer Horace told KCRA.

"We're just all waiting patiently by the phone for all updates, and all positive updates, and spending time together and smiling for the first time in a week," she said.

Horace is overwhelmed by the effort that was put into finding her aunt.

“It's just been so great to see how many good people there are out there," she told KCRA. "You see so many negative stories and it's such a scary world, and to see so many people not knowing (James), not knowing the families, take time out of their day ... it's been amazing."

Powell told KTXL it was “just literally a miracle that those guys found her in just the nick of time.”

“I just am so thankful for the relief that everyone is going to have tonight knowing that she’s safe and warm and fed and we’ll get to bring her home soon,” she said.

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