Two ATV fans drove into a wilderness and found a woman who had been missing for several days.
That IS the punchline, after Adam Sandbeck and Mike Gravalin, from West Fargo, North Dakota, were running their ATVs on a trail in northern Minnesota.
Running low on gas they took a shortcut and rounding a corner in an unmarked trail filled with potholes, they saw a minivan. Stuck.
And they saw something else.
According to a report at the Star-Tribune, it was Kathryn Woessner, who somehow had found her way into the no man’s land.
absolutely wild story of two guys in an ATV accidentally coming upon a missing woman up to her mouth in muddy water in northern Minnesota https://t.co/fmJAPjzm9n pic.twitter.com/gCbwMv9TMc
— Max Nesterak (@maxnesterak) June 15, 2026
They didn’t exactly see the woman at first, the whole woman.
Gravalin, 50, a retired deputy U.S. marshal told the publication he saw a body. “I just remember saying to myself, ‘Oh my God, please don’t be a dead person.’ She was completely submerged.”
Actually, the soon-to-be rescuers saw a woman’s hand and parts of her face above the surface of the muddy water.
They heard: “Help me.”
Sandbeck picked up the narration. “It scared the crap out of me. I watched Mike stop dead in his tracks. It was like, well, let’s help this lady. Neither one of us said anything to each other. We’re just like, ‘Are you OK? How long have you been here?’”
The sheriff’s office in Douglas County had issued an alert for Woessner, 68, of Alexandria, as an endangered person, with a medical condition. She had been missing about three days.
She last had been seen in Hubbard County, about six miles from where she was stuck near Backus in Cass County.
The publication reported she had gotten her vehicle stuck, and got out. She fell into the mud that was several feet deep and like quicksand.
She said she’s been there for days.
‘The water was almost coming over her mouth. I mean, this has got to be one of the strongest women there is … You think about her just watching the sunset, the sun up and burning every day in the sun, and she still had the will to live,” Gravalin said.
A 911 call later and volunteer firefighters soon were helping.
“My gut tells me if we didn’t drive through that trail, this would be a whole different outcome for Kathryn. There’s no doubt in my mind … this was the hand of God directing us to her, because there’s no reason why we would have ever gone down these little trails,” Sandbeck said.
Woessner was taken to a Brainerd hospital.
Said Austin Smith, of the Backus Fire Department, “You can call it dumb luck or divine intervention. But had they not found her that day, who knows when the next person would have drove that trail, and it might have been a completely different outcome.”
Authorities said medical staff estimated she would not have lasted another 24 hours.
