Nearly two hours after Dad locked me outside, his phone rang. Officer Bennett from County Police asked whether he had a teenage daughter and when he had last seen her. Dad admitted I had walked out without a jacket or phone. Then the officer told him a driver had discovered me beside a drainage ditch, unconscious in freezing rain. I had stopped breathing.

A trucker named Ray Castellano had found me while driving home to Superior. He almost passed me, thinking I was discarded clothing, but noticed an arm and slammed on his brakes. He found no pulse and began CPR, remembering training from a safety course twenty years earlier. Paramedics Joanne Pruitt and her partner arrived eleven minutes later and continued resuscitation. My core temperature had fallen to eighty-one degrees. At St. Luke’s Hospital, doctors used heated fluids and circulating-water blankets to warm me internally. At 10:11 that night, my heart began beating independently again. The doctor told Dad that Ray had saved my life.