COLFAX, Ill. (WMBD) -- Two boys who rescued an elderly Illinois woman who got stranded in the snow are being hailed as heroes.
Mary Iler said she was outside Friday morning preparing for the latest winter storm to hit the Midwest when she fell.
"I was cleaning off the ramp, so I could get into the house and down I went," Iler said. "I was a human snowball. The storms were going full blast."
After being stuck in the snow for more than 30 minutes, she heard her neighbors return from a half-day at school.
"Then we heard a faint call and were like, ‘What was that?’" Austin Chase said.
Austin and his brother, Payton, waded through deep drifts of snow and walked up to the house and knocked, but did not hear anything.
“We wondered, ‘Are we just hearing things?’" Austin said.
But then the boys found Iler face down and partially covered by the blowing snow.
"I was like, ‘We need to hurry up and help her because we don't know how long she's been out here, or what's going to happen,’" Peyton said.
Iler said she was freezing and so happy to see the boys. She asked them to bring her into the house.
The boys called their mother and brought her inside to warm up, while they waited for an ambulance.
Iler was taken to the hospital with frostbitten fingers and a blood-clotted leg that required surgery. She is now on a long road to recovery.
"I just don't know how we'll ever thank them,” Becky Godbey, Iler’s daughter, said. “They saved her life… I think she had a guardian angel, I really do”
However, the brothers do not consider themselves. The pair said they were just helping someone in need.
