Driver Survives 30 Hours in Overturned Car

SANTA ROSA, Calif. —  Vicky Lee Skibbins counted passing cars and sang songs to comfort herself for more than 30 hours while she lay trapped in her overturned car.

She had hit a patch of ice, spun out of control and landed upside down in a culvert. There were no witnesses. From the road, there were no clues that she lay in a stream of freezing water just 30 feet below the roadway.

“I’m just so glad to be alive,” she said, recounting the ordeal from her bed at Santa Rosa’s Sutter Medical Center, where she remained hospitalized Thursday. “This is a wonderful Christmas gift.”

Temperatures were plummeting when the 53-year-old Healdsburg nurse, a divorced mother of two, left her parents’ home in Sea Ranch around noon Sunday. She had been there for a week.

Suddenly, her car hit a patch of ice and skidded out of control.

“I had my eyes closed, and I was praying,” Skibbins recalled.

Dazed, she checked herself for injuries. She had earned her nursing degree in 1978 and worked in a Marin hospital before back injuries forced her to slow down.

She said she knew she had a broken finger and maybe a broken collarbone.

The driver-side window was broken, but Skibbins could not push herself out. The horn didn’t work. She was left to lie in water several inches deep that trickled into the car through broken windows.

“Cars started going by. I thought, ‘How rude, why don’t they stop and help me?’ But of course, they couldn’t see me.”

She had a container of bottled water, but no food. She was able to reach an overnight bag and grabbed sweaters and jeans to pile on top of herself. Every fifteen minutes, she turned slightly to help the circulation in her body.

“I didn’t cry. I didn’t panic. I just went through the ABCs and tried to figure out what to do.”

She said she sang songs to comfort herself.

“More than ever I was praying that someone would realize I’m not home,” she said.

She began counting the cars that rushed by on the road--76, 77, 78. No one stopped.

It was a simple thing that ultimately saved her: Before she left for the coast she had given her schedule to her 83-year-old neighbor, Jack Frushour. He became worried when he did not see her car in the driveway Monday.

He decided to call her parents after lunch.

Gerald Skibbins called the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office to report his daughter missing. About 4 p.m., they decided to search by helicopter. Dusk was approaching and Vicky Skibbins was wondering if she would survive another cold night when she heard the sound of a helicopter overhead.

An hour after the search began Monday, she was found.

She had suffered a broken finger and muscle strains in her right shoulder and chest. She was in stable condition at the hospital.

The accident has caused at least one other problem for her father. He told his daughter Tuesday he would have to take back the Christmas gift he bought for her.

“It’s a cover for your car,” he said.