Two lifelong friends, Adam Sandbeck and Mike Gravalin, recently found themselves in the middle of a life-saving mission after stumbling across a woman trapped in deep mud during an ATV ride in northern Minnesota. They were out on the trails on Saturday, June 6, when they discovered Kathryn Woessner, a 68-year-old woman who had been missing for three days. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, the friends, who hail from West Fargo, were originally planning to participate in an organized run for a local bar. However, after they realized they had the date wrong, they spontaneously decided to find some new trails instead, which led them 30 miles away from their RV park. When they ran low on fuel, they reportedly sought a shortcut down an unmarked path filled with potholes and mud from recent overnight rain. The men then spotted a stranded minivan. As they approached the vehicle, they saw a body lying in a puddle. “I just remember saying to myself, ‘Oh my god, please don’t be a dead person,’” Sandbeck said. “She was completely submerged.” As they moved closer, the Tribune noted that they only saw a hand and parts of her face above the surface of the muddy water. Then, they heard a faint whisper: “Help me.” Gravalin, who is a retired deputy US Marshal, had wondered if they were entering an ambush Sandbeck told the Tribune, “It scared the crap out of me. I watched Mike stop dead in his tracks,” Sandbeck said. “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?’” They were soon dealing with a situation that was far more dire than they could have imagined. According to the New York Post, the woman told the friend that she had been stuck for days. She explained that after her minivan got stuck, she stepped out and fell into mud that was two feet deep and acted like quicksand. She told them that she had been lying there for days. Pair of ATVers rescue missing woman stuck in 'quicksand' mud for 3 days on Minnesota trail: 'It had to be God' https://t.co/ig3tV2cfgh pic.twitter.com/lnv28wd1xS— New York Post (@nypost) June 12, 2026 Per the Tribune, she was suffering from severe dehydration and sunburn when she was found. Additionally, it was 90 degrees during the day, and overnight storms brought heavy rains, which had caused the mud and water to rise higher around her. “The water was almost coming over her mouth,” Gravalin said. He expressed his admiration for her resilience, telling the Tribune, “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.” The men called 911 and provided their coordinates. When volunteer firefighters and paramedics arrived, the friends were shocked to learn the woman was Kathryn Woessner, who had been the subject of an endangered missing person alert issued by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. She had been last seen in Hubbard County on June 3rd, about 6 miles from where she was eventually found in rural Cass County. “My gut tells me if we didn’t drive through that trail, this would be a whole different outcome for Kathryn,” Sandbeck told the Tribune. “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.” Cass County Sheriff Bryan Welk mentioned that medical staff believed Woessner would not have survived another 24 hours in the wilderness. Austin Smith, a volunteer with the Backus Fire Department, echoed this sentiment to the outlet, noting that whether it was dumb luck or divine intervention, the outcome could have been tragic if the men hadn’t driven down that specific trail that day. A missing woman was found in a Minnesota puddle of mud where she told her rescuers she had been stuck for days. https://t.co/LiHqQGAHHs— ABC News (@ABC) June 13, 2026 Gravalin, who spent 22 years in law enforcement, described the rescue as one of the most heroic experiences of his life, emphasizing that everything had to go both right and wrong for them to end up in that spot. “Never be annoyed at your situation, because everything happens for a reason,” he said. “We were supposed to be there. This was the last ditch effort to save this woman’s life.” Woessner is now recovering in Brainerd hospital with her family, and local law enforcement is still investigating how she ended up so far from home. Last year, Lisa Theris fled from two men only to get lost in the woods for a month, until a man driving by stopped because he noticed movement in the bushes. On the other hand, Matthew, who went missing in Australia, managed to save himself because of his Saxophone skills.