A 72 year old woman has been rescued after nine days of being stranded in the wilderness of Arizona.

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A Department of Public Safety official said Ann Rodgers and her dog got stranded on a remote stretch of road on March 31st after running out of petrol and depleting the charge on her hybrid car.

She sensibly tried to climb up some ridge lines in an attempt to get reception on her phone, but somehow ended up getting lost and basically stayed lost for the next nine days.

Officials found her car on the road and sent out an aerial search but it proved unsuccessful over two days.

Meanwhile Ann survived on pond water and plants while her dog said ‘fuck it’ and tried to find its own way out. Luckily, officials found the dog walking out of the canyon creek area and a DPS Ranger helicopter was called in for another search.

This time, the chopper found a ‘HELP’ signal made of sticks and rocks on the canyon floor and were able to rescue Ann, who was suffering from exposure but was overall in fair condition after being treated in hospital.

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It’s incredible — earlier this week we wrote about the shipwrecked sailors who made a HELP sign out of palm trees and amazingly that tactic worked in real life and now it’s happened again with this old lady in Arizona.

The difference is I’m not sure this old lady necessarily needed a HELP sign. Why didn’t she just walk back to her car the same way she came from? Instead she spends nine days in the wilderness drinking pond water. Was she just going to sit there doing that until she died? It’s not like she was trapped on a tiny island with nothing but miles of ocean around her. Yet amazingly, her HELP sign made of rocks somehow worked. Good on her not only for surviving but also for getting rescued in the end.

Somehow don’t see her joining this 68 year old grandma in an MMA cage though.