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ATV-riding employee helps save stranded sisters

Hero Stephen Hartman
Hudsonville, MI, Rural Carrier Stephen Hartman

Hudsonville, MI, Rural Carrier Stephen Hartman took his all-terrain vehicle (ATV) out for a spin recently — and ended up helping save two lives.

Hartman, his brother and two friends were riding their ATVs through a remote area on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The group was soon approached by state police officers who had just spotted two missing sisters during an aerial search.

The women had been traveling in a Ford Explorer that got stuck in the woods. For 13 days, they survived on melted snow and the little food they had in the vehicle — Girl Scout cookies and a bag of cheese puffs.

At the officers’ request, Hartman and his group used their ATVs to take the sisters to a waiting helicopter on the Lake Superior shoreline. The women were too weak to make the three-mile trek on foot, and police vehicles couldn’t get through the dense foliage.

“We had two miracles that day,” Leslie Roy, one of the sisters, later told a local TV station. “Not just the helicopter, then these guys.”

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