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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She pops out, didn\u2019t say a word, just ran up,\u201d said Christopher Gutierrez, owner of the Vermilion Valley Resort, on a press conference call Wednesday evening. \u201cShe just wanted a hug.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During a previous failed attempt to reach his resort, Gutierrez spotted a search party led by the Fresno County Sheriff\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019t heard her voice since April 18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShe said, \u2018Dad, I\u2019m alive and I\u2019m sorry,\u2019\u201d Bobby said during the press conference. \u201cBecause I didn\u2019t want to get my hopes up, I asked, \u2018Who is this?\u2019 She said, \u2018This is Tiffany.\u2019 A ton of weight has been lifted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her mother, Fredrina Slaton, said she grabbed the closest person in the grocery store and asked if she could give them a hug. \u201cShe was just close, and I needed to hug somebody,\u201d Fredrina said in the Zoom recording.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Slaton\u2019s family hadn\u2019t heard from her since April 20 and reported her missing on April 29. It\u2019s unclear just how Slaton, who turned 28 on Thursday, survived for nearly a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t see stories like this,\u201d said Tony Botti, spokesperson for the Fresno County Sheriff\u2019s Office, during the press conference. \u201cIt\u2019s unheard of. She\u2019s obviously relentless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Slaton was last seen on April 24 near Shaver Lake, northeast of Fresno. She was found some 40 miles \u2014 an approximately two-hour drive \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201cbucket list\u201d trip that turned into \u201can absolute nightmare\u201d for the family, Bobby previously said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s office spokesperson Botti began to find it \u201cquestionable\u201d and was troubled by limited clues past April 24.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo last that long \u2026 I can\u2019t even grasp it or wrap my head around it,\u201d Gutierrez said during the press conference on Wednesday. \u201cI don\u2019t mean to be grim, but usually this doesn\u2019t end well. It was pretty miraculous she got to where she was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Slaton\u2019s parents are traveling to Fresno on Thursday and will reunite with their daughter as she recovers and detectives piece together her survival story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One thing\u2019s for sure, Fredrina told Gutierrez on Wednesday: \u201cWithout your decisions to leave your sheds open, I don\u2019t think we would be having a happy ending.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13690,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.funminews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/img_2282-1.jpg?fit=225%2C225&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13692,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13691\/revisions\/13692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.funminews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}