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Woman missing for 8 days found alive in crashed car; red tape delayed search
MAPLE VALLEY (Washington), Sep 28: During the eight days that Tanya Rider lay seriously injured in her crashed SUV, her husband was fighting red tape to get authorities to launch a search for her.
Rider, 33, was found alive but dehydrated at the bottom of a steep ravine on Thursday, more than a week after she failed to return home from work.
Authorities were able to detect the general location of her cellphone that morning, then searched along the highway she travelled from work in suburban Seattle to her Maple Valley home. They noticed some matted brush, and below it they found her smashed vehicle on its side, State Patrol spokesman Jeff Merrill said.
“She looks very pale, very dehydrated. She didn't have a lot of cuts but had difficulty breathing,” Merrill said.
Friday morning, Rider was in critical condition and fighting for her life at Harborview Medical Center, her husband, Tom Rider said. He said she was suffering from kidney failure and sores from lying in the same position for a week and that she could lose her leg.
“All I know is that she's here and she's alive, and that, in itself, is a miracle,” he told CNN. “She's alive after eight days. If God was going to take her, he would have taken her before that.”
Tanya Rider left work at a Fred Meyer grocery store in Bellevue on Sept. 19 but never made it home. When her husband couldn't reach her, he said, he called Bellevue police to report his wife missing.
Bellevue police took the report right away, but when they found video of Tanya Rider getting into her car after work, they told her husband the case was out of their jurisdiction and he should notify King County, he said.
Tom Rider said he tried that but ``the first operator I talked to on the first day I tried to report it flat denied to start a missing persons report because she didn't meet the criteria.”
“I basically hounded them until they started a case and then, of course, I was the first focal point, so I tried to get myself out of the way as quickly as possible. I let them search the house. I told them they didn't have to have a warrant for anything, just ask,” he said.
Thursday morning, they asked Tom Rider to sign for a search of phone records. The also asked him to take a polygraph test.
“By the time he was done explaining the polygraph test to me, the detective burst into the room with a cell phone map that had a circle on it,” he said. He said the detective started explaining the blip they had found and within minutes, news arrived that Tanya Rider had been found.
Her car had tumbled about six metres down a ravine and lay buried below heavy brush and blackberry bushes. Rescuers had to cut the roof off to get her out.
“I know there were delays (in finding her) because of red tape,” Tom Rider said.
Tanya Rider was still behind the wheel and pinned against the front end of the car, Merrill said. All the air bags had deployed, he said, but she couldn't escape because of her injuries and the crushed state of the SUV.
A King County Sheriff's spokesman expressed sympathy but said the agency followed standard procedure in the case.
“That's a terrible, terrible experience ... a heart-wrenching experience, and my heart goes out to him,” Deputy Rodney Chinnick said Friday.
“It's not that we didn't take him seriously,” Chinnick said. “We don't take every missing person report on adults. ... If we did, we'd be doing nothing but going after missing person reports.”
He said adults are entitled to privacy if they decide to do something out of the ordinary and that Rider's initial missing person report did not contain either of the two elements that would trigger an immediate search: evidence of foul play or unusual vulnerability such as age, mental condition or lack of critical medications.
“Not showing up at home is not illegal,” he said.
