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Photo from her family Joan Beebe, hospitalized after being stuck in the snow for eight days, is shown here with her grandson, Jack Beebe. Sunday driver finds lost 83-year-old Rogue River woman, dog survive ordeal By JONEL ALECCIA WIMER -- The companionship of a Pomeranian puppy might have been all that sustained an elderly Rogue River woman trapped for eight days in a snowbound car. Joan Arline Beebe, 83, and her dog, Cutie, had been without food since April 3 when they were discovered Sunday on a remote mountain road near Upper Pleasant Creek. "If she didn't have that dog with her, she might not have had the will to live," said Dick Beebe, 57, her son. "But she just loves that dog." As it was, Joan Beebe remained in serious condition at Three Rivers Community Hospital in Grants Pass Monday, recovering from hypothermia and dehydration. Her ordeal began as a quick trip to the Rogue River post office. It ended when target shooter Neil Pemberton took his two sons for a ride on a mountain road. "I saw a red car pulled into the snow there on the right fork of this logging road. It looked like the car was in trouble," said Pemberton. "Then as I approached it, her little dog popped his head out the window and started barking. I knew immediately who it was." Pemberton had heard about the missing woman from news reports, and he works with Dick Beebe at Jim Sigel Automotive Center in Grants Pass. He knew that Joan Beebe suffers from mild dementia and short-term memory loss. He knew that her family had spent the past week combing mountain roads for her. And he knew that when area sheriff's deputies and a state police plane failed to locate her, family members hired their own helicopter. Still, there was no sign. "It was a terrible week for Dick," said Pemberton, 44, of Rogue River. So Pemberton approached the red 1983 Toyota Tercel sedan and opened the driver's door. "I saw her slumped over and she was moaning," he recalled. "She said, `Help me,' and I said, `I'm here to help you; I'll get you off the mountain."' Pemberton and his sons gently lifted the tiny woman -- 105 pounds at most -- into their pickup, covered her with a coat and sped down the hill. She had spent more than a week stuck in the disabled car at about 3,500 feet, enduring snowstorms and temperatures that dropped into the teens. "I was amazed that she could have lived this long," Pemberton said. "She didn't have a whole lot of body weight to keep her warm." At the first house, Pemberton called 911 -- and then Dick Beebe. "I let him know I found her and that she was alive," he said. "It was a miracle, that's what he said." And it's what Dick Beebe still felt, a day later, as he contemplated his mother's feat. Although she's a hardy woman who favors the outdoors and still mows her own lawn, family members grew more worried as time went on. "We thought that she could have survived a few nights, but we never dreamed that if she was actually in the hills or the woods that she could survive for eight nights," he said. Joan Beebe was reported missing April 3 after she drove away from her West Evans Creek Road home. She lived alone in a house a few hundred yards from her son's residence. Dick Beebe said she had promised family members to drive no farther than the half-mile to her mailbox and back. Judging from mail delivered a few days after Joan Beebe went missing, she apparently drove to the Rogue River post office, but then never returned home. Dick Beebe surmises that she failed to recognize her own driveway and simply continued into the hills, where the car became stuck. "We thought we had made it abundantly clear that she shouldn't be on the road," he said. "You hate to be so stern and strict with a person that their independence is ruined. Now I think we probably should have taken her keys or disabled her car." Once she's released from the hospital, Joan Beebe will live with her son, who is more than relieved that the ordeal is over. "It was the worst week of my life," Dick Beebe said. "And I'm certain it was the worst week of my mother's life. The not knowing, for us, was the worst part of all." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA