Stranded 83-Year-Old Lived On Juice, Frost

An 83-year-old woman stranded in the desolate grasslands for more than a week was rescued Saturday after living on fruit juice and the frost she scraped off the hood of her car.

Mae Wardell drank the half-dozen or so cans of orange, apricot and other juices she had with her and layered on all the extra clothes she could find - a sweater, jacket and a couple of pairs of pants - when the temperature dipped into the upper 20s.

“It’s amazing,” Midwest Police Chief Gary Jackson said. “She did the right thing to stay with her vehicle. When you get into a week or so it begins looking a little grim.”

Wardell left Casper, where she had been visiting her sister at a nursing home, on Sept. 29 and headed home to Gillette, about 130 miles northeast. But she got lost and stuck in the mud, then wore her car battery down trying to get free.

On Saturday, a father and son out hunting about 15 miles west of Midwest - a central Wyoming town of about 400 people - came across her car and found her lying on the front seat, conscious and happy to see them.

Wardell was taken to a hospital where she was “weak, but alert and in real good spirits,” Jackson said. “She’s a tough lady.”

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