LAKESIDE MARBLEHEAD, Ohio — Imagine floating in the open water overnight, time feeling like it's crawling, while you're just hoping someone hears your cries for help; that was the case for a local woman Sunday night.
The woman spent 15 hours clinging on for dear life in Lake Erie after falling off her jet ski until a local boater rescued her.
A 57-year-old woman, whose name is not being released, fell off her jet ski near South Bass Island. Her jet ski was found off the coast near Davis-Besse Nuclear Plant around 1 a.m. Monday before the woman was found near the mouth of the Portage River.
The U.S. Coast Guard credited her life jacket for her survival.
"Definitely our spirits were high," Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Bethannie Kittrell said.
"The life jacket very likely saved her life," Coast Guard Chief David Turner added. "It's very difficult to believe that somebody could tread water in the conditions and the weather and the waves overnight the way she did without that life jacket."
With helicopters from the U.S. and Canada buzzing overhead, searching roughly 700 nautical miles, the 57-year-old mother just floated and hoped while being carried roughly 12 nautical miles.
Kittrell stopped short of calling the rescue a miracle but said it came pretty close.
"It's a miraculous story," she said. "It's amazing. It's the good stories like this that make us, you know, very humbled to come back to work and just proud to do the job that we do."
The Coast Guard told WTOL the woman is in good spirits as she recovers in the hospital from hypothermia and some wounds. Wounds that were sustained in the battle for her life, which turned out to be a winning one.