This winter, a resort owner in the Sierra National Forest decided to keep the cabin doors unlocked should anyone need shelter to survive while the area was snowed in. Just in case.
On Wednesday afternoon, he came across a woman who did just that: Tiffany Slaton, a camper from Jeffersonville, Georgia, who went missing three weeks ago. She walked through a blizzard the day before the resort owner found her, seeking refuge in one of the cabins.
She pops out, didn’t say a word, just ran up,” said Christopher Gutierrez, owner of the Vermilion Valley Resort, on a press conference call Wednesday evening. “She just wanted a hug.”
During a previous failed attempt to reach his resort, Gutierrez spotted a search party led by the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office in the area, and he knew there was a missing camper matching the woman standing before him. Slaton was ravenous, and he made her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Once they got a cellphone signal coming down the mountain, Slaton called her father, Bobby Slaton, while he was in a grocery store in Georgia. He hadn’t heard her voice since April 18.
“She said, ‘Dad, I’m alive and I’m sorry,’” Bobby said during the press conference. “Because I didn’t want to get my hopes up, I asked, ‘Who is this?’ She said, ‘This is Tiffany.’ A ton of weight has been lifted.”
Her mother, Fredrina Slaton, said she grabbed the closest person in the grocery store and asked if she could give them a hug. “She was just close, and I needed to hug somebody,” Fredrina said in the Zoom recording.
Slaton’s family hadn’t heard from her since April 20 and reported her missing on April 29. It’s unclear just how Slaton, who turned 28 on Thursday, survived for nearly a month.
“You don’t see stories like this,” said Tony Botti, spokesperson for the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office, during the press conference. “It’s unheard of. She’s obviously relentless.”
Slaton was last seen on April 24 near Shaver Lake, northeast of Fresno. She was found some 40 miles — an approximately two-hour drive — farther east than where she was last seen. She made it past Mono Hot Springs, the last place her family knew she was headed. Officials first thought she turned back when she realized the area was snowed in.
Slaton was traveling on an electric bike with a red trailer, choosing to visit California as part of her mission to visit all 50 states on a “bucket list” trip that turned into “an absolute nightmare” for the family, Bobby previously said.
After an intensive five-day ground search that began on May 6, not a single sign of Slaton emerged. The search team included some 30 volunteers, Jeeps, horses and small airplanes that covered 600 square miles and went up to Mono Hot Springs. Unable to pass on ground, a helicopter scouted the area of Lake Edison and the hot springs, but neither Slaton nor her belongings were found.
Officials scaled back the search on Saturday in order to find more leads before conducting another ground search. No foul play was suspected, but sheriff’s office spokesperson Botti began to find it “questionable” and was troubled by limited clues past April 24.
“To last that long … I can’t even grasp it or wrap my head around it,” Gutierrez said during the press conference on Wednesday. “I don’t mean to be grim, but usually this doesn’t end well. It was pretty miraculous she got to where she was.”
Slaton’s parents are traveling to Fresno on Thursday and will reunite with their daughter as she recovers and detectives piece together her survival story.
One thing’s for sure, Fredrina told Gutierrez on Wednesday: “Without your decisions to leave your sheds open, I don’t think we would be having a happy ending.”
