The 23-year-old Centralia woman was in her underwear and soaking wet. She was hypothermic, covered in scratches from the sticker bushes and in need of medical attention.
Trooper Guy Gill said the truck driver’s “willingness to help this girl could have saved her life.” The woman was taken to St. Clare Hospital in Lakewood and expected to make a full recovery.
Troopers believe the woman abandoned a Jeep Cherokee about 200 yards from I-5 sometime Wednesday night. The Cherokee, which had the woman’s prescription medicine inside, was located off gravel roads near Mounts Road.
“She abandoned that vehicle for some reason, and we don’t know why,” Gill said.
He noted that troopers didn’t believe the Jeep had crashed. It might have broken down or run out of gas.
The woman somehow worked her way from the Jeep to the freeway.
The truck driver, a Portland man, got a flat tire on the trailer he was towing just before 8:30 a.m. Thursday and pulled to the shoulder of I-5 near the Nisqually River.
The driver then saw the woman climb over the guardrail from a swamp area next to the highway. The driver went to help the woman and put her in his truck, Gill said. He drove – with the flat tire – to the State Patrol’s scale house in DuPont and called for troopers.
Stacey Mulick: 253-597-8268
