Redmond Teen Survives For Days In Car At Bottom Of Ravine

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By By KOMO Staff & News Services

Summary

Laura Hatch was found alive Sunday in the car she apparently crashed down a 200-foot embankment more than a week earlier.

Story Published: Oct 10, 2004 at 4:12 PM PDT

Story Updated: Aug 31, 2006 at 1:35 AM PDT

Redmond Teen Survives For Days In Car At Bottom Of Ravine
REDMOND - After eight days, Laura Hatch's family had almost given the 17-year-old up for dead, and sheriff's deputies had all but written her off as a runaway. Then she was found, badly hurt and severely dehydrated, but alive and conscious, in the back seat of a crumpled car, 200 feet down a ravine.

A volunteer searcher who said she had had several vivid dreams of a wooded area found the wrecked car in the trees Sunday.

Laura, who remained hospitalized Monday in serious condition, was last seen at a party on Oct. 2. When she did not show up by the next day, her family filed a missing person's report.

The initial search was slowed because there had been underage drinking at the party, and the young people who attended would not say where it had been held, sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said.

On Oct. 6, detectives learned the party had been in a neighborhood east of Lake Washington and searched along her likely route home, Urquhart said. But prospects dimmed as the days passed.

"We had already given her up and let her be dead in our hearts," her mother, Jean Hatch, told KOMO 4 News.

Urquhart noted that in 24 years with the department, he had never known of a person to survive eight days without food or water. He said an investigation into the accident was under way.

During the search, a statewide bulletin was released and advisories were sent to local police agencies. But Urquhart said family and friends indicated "the most likely scenario was that she was a runaway."

Laura's parents organized a volunteer search on Saturday with 200 volunteers in areas near the place where the car was found. And that night Sha Nohr, a church member and mother of a friend of Hatch's, said she had dreams of a wooded area and heard the message, "Keep going, keep going."

On Sunday morning, Nohr and her daughter drove to the area where the crash occurred, praying along the way.

Nohr said something drew her to stop and clamber over a concrete barrier and more than 100 feet down a steep, densely vegetated embankment where she barely managed to discern the wrecked Toyota Camry in some trees.

She called to her daughter, who flagged down a passing driver. The man helped Nohr get closer to the car as aid was summoned.

"I told her that people were looking for her and they loved her," Nohr recalled, "and she said, `I think I might be late for curfew."'

Laura was being treated at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for dehydration, a blood clot on the brain, and broken bones in her face, hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg-Hanson said.

"She's a little bit confused. That's really standard course for what she's been through," Gregg-Hanson said. "I think everybody thinks it's an amazing story that she's doing as well as she is." Doctors expect she will make a complete recovery.

Meanwhile, the girl's family has remained by her side.

"The fact that she managed to survive that crash and then survive another eight days without medical attention...that in itself is a miracle," said Amy Hatch, Laura's sister.

More than 100 friends and acquaintances from Creekside Covenant Church cheered and sang at a celebratory prayer service that initially had been scheduled as a vigil Sunday night.

Jean Hatch thanked Nohr for saving her daughter.

"If it wasn't for (Nohr), I know my daughter would not be here now," Jean Hatch said. "And if she'd gone another day or two...she probably wouldn't be alive now.

"We knew it wasn't her time...it's just not her time."