The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department rescued a woman and her dog who became stuck on a canyon ledge off Angeles Crest Highway in May -- but this time it was the sheriff's department who had praise for the stranded hiker.
The deputies who came to the woman's rescue were certainly heroes, but they also are crediting the woman who did all the right things to make sure she got off the mountain alive.
"She hiked from Switzer's into Bear Canyon and that's where she got into a little bit of trouble," LASD Deputy Tom Mayberry said.
LASD Air Rescue 5 had geared up and was in the air that day in May when they got the call of a hiker stranded on a cliff.
"She was on a very sheer cliff side. I don't want to say ... she was probably 50 to 100 feet above the canyon floor," LASD Deputy Mike Wilber said. "But because the hiker was prepared...the crew was able to find her right away."
"Not only did she still have cell phone reception, but she was savvy enough to give her lat-long ... her GPS coordinates," Mayberry added. "She was actually signaling us with her headlamp."
"Rescue 5 crew members showed us the medical and tactical gear they used, including this.... harness called a horse collar," Mayberry said.
"This is for circumstances when you have to get someone secured quickly," Deputy Brice Stella said.
Until they arrived, however, the rescue team didn't know the hiker had a small dog with her.
"Being an animal lover, I didn't want to see anything bad happen to that dog," Mayberry said.
"Obviously our mission is to get her safe and sound, but yeah, I wanted to make sure that dog got up too."
Mayberry came up with the idea to put the little dog in the woman's backpack, and she added a safety feature of her own.
"She actually did something very smart," Mayberry said. "She took the leash and she harnessed the dog, the leash around her body, back around the dog's hind quarter and created a chest harness."
The entire rescue took only a matter of minutes, and the hiker and the dog returned safely.
"I asked her the dog's name; it was Pippa," Stella said.
"She immediately let out this big smile of relief, obviously a weight had been lifted off her shoulders," Mayberry said. "[She was] very happy to be out of that bad spot and I think the dog was too."
