Teen Who Ran Out of Gas, Vanished in Mountains Found

An 18-year-old woman was found alive but not coherent after being missing in part of Washington's Cascade Mountains that's known as a cellphone "dead zone" for 9 days. Officials are dubbing it "definitely a miracle" that Giovanna "Gia" Fuda was discovered on Saturday. The last known sighting of her was July 24 at an Index coffee shop; the following day her abandoned car was found out of gas in what ABC7 describes as "extremely mountainous terrain"; USA Today notes the dense foliage prevented a helicopter search. It wasn't until Saturday that much of anything showed up: clothing, shoes, and a notebook were located along a creek and Fuda was found 2 miles up a very steep embankment shortly thereafter.

A family friend tells KING 5 she survived by eating berries. A rep for King County Sheriff's Office says they'll need to speak with Fuda to learn what happened, but they speculate she got lost while searching for gas. The nearest station was 10 miles away. Making her discovery potentially more of a miracle: the family friend tells KING 5 the search was ending: "We knew that this was the last day of the search and we were concerned that we weren’t going to find her and we were going to leave these mountains without her." (More missing person stories.)