Woman Hoped for Voice in Wilderness

Her pants torn, her hands bloodied and her right ankle broken after a fall off a mountain trail, Angelina Hoffman, lost for two days in the Angeles National Forest, hoped against hope that another human voice would answer her screams.

“I was so frightened,” the 59-year-old Garden Grove mother of five said Tuesday, speaking from her hospital bed at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Anaheim. “I thought to myself, ‘How can I survive another day of this, a third night?’ I just prayed and prayed I’d hear someone’s voice.”

Hoffman was found Monday afternoon by a search helicopter after spending two nights alone and lost in the forest. She had become separated from Harold Hoffman, her husband of 33 years, at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at the 6,650-foot level of Islip Saddle Trail off State Route 2 above Crystal Lake. Harold Hoffman told deputies he searched in vain for his wife for three hours after he turned around and saw that she was no longer behind him.

When she was found, frantically waving to the helicopter, Hoffman was sprawled on Snow Spar Ridge 1,000 feet above State Route 39 and about two miles from the area where deputies expected her to be.

“I was never so thankful in all my life,” said Hoffman, animated in her speech despite the bandages around her broken thumb, the pain from her broken ribs and ankle and the wounds on her bruised face. Holding the hand of her son, Glen, she added, “I’m just thankful I survived this whole ordeal.”

Hoffman said she had wanted to lose weight and thought going on a strenuous hike with her husband would help her shed a few pounds. She said he waited for her to catch up several times along the steep, 12-mile trail before she finally lost sight of him.

“I waited about 10 minutes on the trail, hollering his name,” Hoffman said. “Then I walked away and thought he just left me stranded.”

It was at that point, Hoffman said, she panicked and slipped and fell down the loose, gravelly earth on the western slope of the mountain.

“I thought maybe he didn’t care,” she said. “Did he do this intentionally? Was this planned? You’d think he’d come back to where I was.”

For the next two days, Hoffman’s husband and children camped out at the mountain, assisting the more than two dozen members of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s search and rescue team who scoured the steep mountain terrain.

Angelina Hoffman said she was aware there was a search going on as she saw the helicopters buzz overhead. But then they would fade into the distance.

“Saturday, I heard helicopters. Back and forth. Back and forth,” she said, firing off one sentence after another. “Sunday, too. Back and forth. I kept waving my hands at them, but nothing.

“I found a place and stayed there all day Saturday. I was trying to get to the highway. On Sunday, I found another spot, and I ate patches of snow.”

Hoffman, clad in long pants, a short-sleeve blouse and a light jacket, survived 25-degree night mountain air and gusty winds. Sheriff’s deputies said she was partly sheltered from easterly winds that gusted to 70 m.p.h. because she was on the west side of the mountain. Her only nourishment was 1 1/2 liters of grapefruit juice.

“I thought hiking would keep my weight down,” said Hoffman, who is 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs 125 pounds. “Now I realize how dangerous it can be. I was so frightened. I’d rather have all the weight.”