tanya rider

MAPLE VALLEY, Wash. (AP) ― 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, he said Friday.

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 had been able to detect the general location of her cell phone that morning, then searched along the highway she traveled from work in suburban Seattle to her Maple Valley home. They noticed some matted brush, and below it they found Rider's Honda Element, smashed 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 sedated 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," he said.

"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.

Tom Rider said he also drove the route where his wife was found but didn't see any sign of a crash. He also offered a $25,000 reward for any information leading to her safe return.

Thursday morning, detectives asked him to come in to sign for a search of phone records. They 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," Tom Rider said Friday. 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 20 feet down a ravine and lay buried below heavy brush and blackberry bushes. The air bags deployed, but she was injured and trapped. Rescuers had to cut the roof off to get her out. MAPLE VALLEY, Wash. (AP) A man in Washington state says his wife is "fighting for her life" after being found in her car at the bottom of a steep ravine. Tanya Rider had been missing for eight days when authorities found her by tracing her cell-phone signal. She's now hospitalized in critical condition.

VERACRUZ, Mexico (AP) Hurricane Lorenzo has made landfall on Mexico's Gulf Coast. The Category One storm prompted the evacuation of low-lying coastal communities, and officials opened up more than 60 shelters in advance.

White House (AP) President Bush has ordered regulators to figure out how to reduce airline delays that keep passengers stuck on planes. The Transportation secretary says all options are on the table. She's starting by asking airlines to improve scheduling at New York's busy JFK Airport.

CAPITOL HILL (AP) A bill that would expand a children's health-care program is becoming the center of a veto showdown. The Senate has enough support to override a promised veto by President Bush. But the measure fell about two-dozen votes shy in the House.

WASHINGTON (AP) Immigration officials have whittled down the list of potential questions for a new citizenship test. Federal officials have been trying out questions since February to get to the final 100. A question about Martin Luther King Junior makes the cut for the new test but one about Patrick Henry doesn't.


"I know there were delays (in finding her) because of red tape," Tom Rider said.

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 C. 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."

Adults are entitled to privacy if they decide to do something out of the ordinary, and Chinnick said 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.
SEATTLE -- Harborview Medical Center in Seattle says the woman who was trapped eight days in a wrecked car has injuries to her scalp, shoulder, spine, ribs, and left leg.

Tanya Rider is sedated in critical condition in the intensive care unit.

Her husband Tom Rider says she also had kidney failure from severe dehydration. But he says the good news this morning is that doctors are no longer talking about amputating the injured leg.