Miracles can happen anytime when we expect nothing, everything changes suddenly and we get surprised. The 35-year-old woman who is a yoga instructor went missing during a routine hike in Hawaii and fortunately after 16 days of missing she was rescued via helicopter.
Rescuers group hired by her family, found Amanda Eller, deep in a forest. They track her down. She was injured and dehydrated, according to the Facebook page launched to aid in the search.
“She got lost and was stuck and slightly injured in the forest, way-way out. Somewhere way far above Twin Falls,” the post read.
“Between two waterfalls down a deep ravine in a creek bed. Chris [Berquist] and Javier [Cantellops] spotted her and she spotted them, waving them down. She is being air evacuated now. She just talked to her father on the phone. Amanda Eller is ALIVE!!”
Eller’s injuries can be seen easily in photos shared by the page, including extremely swollen and bruised feet and ankles.
Eller’s father John Eller told KITV 4 his daughter walked without any trouble for the first five to eight days before went missing, and she got lost in the bushy forest as she tried to make her way back.
“She figured it out, she was smart, she was strong, she was prepared,” he said. “We said that in the beginning, and it was absolutely true.”
Her family told the website, Eller was dehydrated and sunburnt when she found by the rescuers, but she was “physically okay” and able to speak, and she is recovering slowly at a local hospital.
After coming back, Eller looked happy as she smiled for a selfie alongside her rescuers Berquist, Cantellops, and Troy Helmer in a photo shared to Facebook.
Maui Police and Fire stopped the search and suggested Eller’s friends and family hire a private helicopter paid for with donations raised from a GoFundMe page.
She was found with the help of that helicopter.
“BECAUSE YOU DID NOT GIVE UP!!!!! BECAUSE THIS COMMUNITY DID NOT GIVE UP!!!! WE FOUND HER!!!!!! ALIVE AND WELL(ish, I mean come on, I’d be painting coconuts and screaming WILSON!!!!!),” Berquist, one of her rescuers, wrote on Facebook.
“We found Amanda because we did it right. We covered the ground so well that we had little to no doubt that she wasn’t within our reasonable radius… That is the only reason I could confidently ask for a helicopter to look further out and try to send our people deeper.
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Sarah Haynes, who made a Find Amanda Facebook page, tells PEOPLE that during her days in the forest, Eller survived on berries and guavas. Haynes said she drank water from a waterfall, but that Eller stopped drinking from it after it rained to avoid a run-off because it could have made her sick.
Eller is a yoga instructor and physical therapist she lives in Haiku, Maui, she was disappeared after she failed to return home from a trail in the Makawao Forest Reserve.
Her boyfriend, Ben Konkol, reported the next day of her missing and said he was the last person to see her.
“She really likes to be alone in nature, too… so it’s not unlike her to do that,” he said at a press conference. “The moment that she did not arrive home at night I knew something was wrong. It did not feel good in my body.”
Her mother, Julia, found a package on Mother’s Day, the day when she disappeared.
“We still have history to make together, and I need you as part of my life,” Julia told KITV 4. “I never in a million years thought this would happen to me.”
“She is just as strong as we always said she would be. We knew she could make it this long,” supporters wrote on the Facebook page, which was followed by more than 20,000 people.
“I have the most gratitude and respect, and appreciation, I can’t even put it into words, for the people that have helped me, for the people that have paid for me, for the people that were at base camp,” said Eller from the hospital.