UPDATED: Missing woman found alive in Greene County
Haddie Baysinger
Courtesy of the Greene County Sheriff’s Department
Rescuers talk with Haddie Baysinger after she was found Friday afternoon.
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
A team prepares Friday to join the search for a missing Whiteley Township woman.
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
State troopers on horseback take part in the search for an elderly Whiteley Township woman Friday.
Hope was dwindling late Friday morning as family, neighbors, state police and nearly a dozen other agencies came together in Whiteley Township to look for Haddie Baysinger.
By noon, the 84-year-old who walks with a cane had been missing 24 hours, and had been outside in the heat Thursday, thunderstorms that night and heat again Friday.
But Haddie is one tough lady.
“She is stable and in good spirits,” Trooper Robert Broadwater said Friday afternoon, just minutes after she was found.
Thursday afternoon, Haddie had been driving on a utility vehicle, as she often does, along a right-of-way near her Rudolf Run Road property. Sometime after 2 p.m. her family found the vehicle stuck, and Haddie nowhere in sight.
“They called me at work and told me she was missing,” said Haddie’s daughter-in-law, Bobbie Baysinger.
David O’Donnell, an 84-year-old neighbor of Haddie’s, said he’s known Haddie for 40 years.
“She’s been riding that thing for years,” he said about the utility vehicle.
The family searched for her, and shortly after 5 p.m., they contacted state police. Several search and rescue teams from across the region were brought to the intersection of Rudolf Run and Fuller roads to search for the woman.
They searched the area until midnight, when the search was called off due to weather, Broadwater said. They returned the next morning with more people.
State police had a helicopter in the air and officers on horseback searching the area. A fleet of ATV riders were searching in the woods along with tracking dogs from several agencies, including the Greene County Sheriff’s Office, Lone Pine Fire Department and Fayette County Sheriff’s Office. Mike Fortney, with Monongalia County (W.Va.) Emergency Management, used a drone to help in the search.
The Salvation Army was set up with refreshments for the emergency responders, and Southwest EMS was at the scene, waiting for the moment she was found.
Finally, that moment came.
“She was smiling, and she said, ‘I’m OK; don’t cry,'” Bobbie said. “She always puts everyone first.”
Police said when the vehicle got stuck, Haddie attempted to walk home but fell. She was found on the other side of a steep hill in a heavily wooded area, police said.
“She said once she fell down she just stayed there,” Bobbie said.
The Civil Air Patrol of Greene County, a group of adolescent cadets who have trained in searches, found her first, between 300 and 500 feet away from the utility vehicle, police said.
“She was surprised we were looking for her,” said 13-year-old Aspen Hixenbaugh.
Led by her father, Shane Hixenbaugh, Aspen, along with her brother, Chase Hixenbaugh, 16, and Aiden Pester, 12, and Kyle Pester, 14, it was the group’s first real mission. And what a success.
Bobbie hugged the teens and thanked them for finding her mother.
“There have been a lot of prayers,” Bobbie said. “We’re so thankful and blessed.”
It wasn’t an audible sigh of relief, but it was visible in the eyes of every responder on scene, as everyone recognized how much worse of an outcome it could have been for Haddie. She was taken to Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va., for minor injuries, cuts and evaluation, police said.
Bobbie and other family members thanked all of the responders and volunteers for helping during those terrifying hours, saying that it’s a relief to know that people from such a widespread region are willing to come to them in times of need.
They also said they may need to consider taking away Haddie’s keys to the utility vehicle.