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Daring Rescue

13-year-old girl comes to mother’s aid on hiking trip

Sydney Weiford, a soon-to-be eighth-grade student at Tygarts Valley Middle School, and her mother, Cheryl Goff, decided to go for a hike on the Appalachian Trail near the Gaudineer Scenic Area on Cheat Mountain on Monday.

"I had the day off and my daughter and I wanted to do something together, so we made plans to go on a little hike," said Goff, a nurse at Huttonsville Correctional Center. "We had been hiking at the Gaudineer area of Cheat Mountain before, so that's where we decided we wanted to go again."

Equipped with enough water for a two-mile hike, the duo took off on the Little Gaudineer trail toward the Virgin Pines area. While making their way through the thick forest with their dogs Daphany, a black Lab, and Pixie, a Yorkie, things suddenly took a turn for the worse for the mother and daughter.

"The loop is usually about a half mile and there is another (trail) that's a couple miles," Goff said. "Apparently in the woods we took a right when we should have taken a left, and we got to be about 4 1/2 miles in."

After realizing how far back in the woods they actually were, Goff began to feel ill.

"My head started pounding and I could feel my heart beating in my ears," she said. "So we tried to turn around and start heading back to the car. But I could only go about 50 feet and I'd have to lay down on the ground because my heart rate was going over 200, my feet were going numb, my head was pounding, and my mouth was extremely dry."

After multiple attempts to walk, Goff came to the realization that she was not going to be able to physically make it out of the woods under her own power. The pair had no cell phone service on the mountain.

"I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it out without some kind of help," Goff said. "So I said a prayer with Sydney and sent her down the trail alone."

With nothing other than her dog Daphany by her side, Sydney began the long trek back to the vehicle.

"She had the presence of mind, without me telling her, to mark the trail with sticks and arrows so they knew how to get back to me," Goff said. "Once she got out to the car, which she had never driven before because she is not of age, she drove down a gravel road for three miles to the main road. She then had to drive all the way off Cheat Mountain for about 10 miles to get cell phone service."

Goff said her daughter immediately dialed 911 once she was in cell phone range and gave the operators all the information they needed.

"She called 911 and told them what was going on," she explained. "After that she called my mother and waited on her. Then they all came back up with the ambulance and she showed EMS where we parked, where we went and gave them all the information they needed to get back to me.

"The 911 dispatcher I talked to later said (Sydney) did a better job than most adults do when calling in an emergency. They said she had all the right information and remained calm, cool and collected throughout the whole thing."

While waiting to be rescued, Goff admitted she wasn't quite as nonchalant as her 13-year-old.

"After about two hours of being out there alone, I was thinking that I made a mistake of sending her out alone," Goff said. "I had a little bit of a freak-out moment where I was thinking of every bad scenario, like did she get lost in the woods, did she wreck the car, things like that. But I just asked God to let my daughter be safe and to let me talk to her again. And we were out in bear country, so I was hoping and praying that someone would get to me by dark."

Goff, who is 54 years old, spent a total of nine hours in the woods that day, including three and a half hours all alone with just her dog Pixie by her side.

"I had my entire colon removed in February of this year, and I guess what I learned most from this is that you can get dehydrated really quickly because of it," she said. "Dehydration is one of the major things that can go wrong with having a colectomy."

Goff said she and her daughter were out of water even before Sydney started her solo walk back down the mountain.

"We were only anticipating a two-mile hike, which we had plenty of water for," Goff explained. "And when the emergency squad people got to me to get me out, my Fitbit said 6.3 miles we had walked. My blood pressure was high, my heart rate was still up, and I was really dehydrated when they got there."

Goff said she would have never sent her daughter to search for help if she didn't think she was capable of completing the task.

"I knew my daughter could do it and I believed in her," she said. "If I hadn't thought she could do it, I would have never sent her. She assured me before she left that she could do it and she did. I'm extremely proud of her."

Workers from the Randolph County and Durbin Emergency Squads started an IV for fluids for Goff and then assist-walked her out of the woods.

She was then transported to Davis Medical Center, where she received two more bags of fluids before later being released. She was put on bed rest and instructed not to work for a week.

While finding her way out of the woods alone and then driving a vehicle for the first time, Sydney said she was not worried about herself, but only about her mother.

"I was scared for my mom and the only thing I was thinking was that I had to get out fast to get help for her," she said.

"As far as driving goes, I had seen a bunch of adults drive my whole life, so I kind of knew what to do."