American Heroes: Mountain Rescue

From inside the wreckage high on a mountain pass, a call came from a cell phone.

"We need help bad. My mom's not going to make it unless we get somebody out here quick," said Steve Palmer on a recorded 911 call. "We're hurt. I'm in pain."

The Early Show contributor Rick Salllinger reports that the sheriff's dispatcher in Steamboat Springs, Colo., had phone contact with those inside the crashed Piper Cherokee airplane, but they didn't know where they were.

Pilot Skip Moreau had taken the group to Steamboat Springs to celebrate the birthday of his girlfriend, 57-year-old Henrietta Palmer. But, the plane never made it to its destination.

Volunteers from Routt County's Search and Rescue Team were sent out in snowmobiles while others in a helicopter looked from the air.

Their only means of contact was through Palmer's cell phone. But, the phone's batteries were losing energy.

"I think my leg is broken," Palmer tells authorities. "Can they get a signal on us or not? I need to know. Hurry, I'm going to run out of battery."

A broken tree branch was spotted from the air. Soon the aircraft was found. But, getting to it was another story. A severe storm was heading to the area.

Rescuers fought through a blinding snowstorm to try to reach the plane at an elevation of 9,800 feet. Snowmobile tour operator Jason Cobb was asked to join in the search, and he was the first to reach the crash site.

"Two guys were standing outside the plane ... they already had a fire going," says Cobb. "They were trying to stay warm. There were two people inside the plane still."

Henrietta Palmer was trapped in the wreckage.

An already difficult situation was complicated by the fact that there were three dogs on board — pit bulls that snapped at the rescuers.

But the animals, the pilot's pets, were also a temporary blessing. They were used to keep the victims warm as they waited for more help.

It was four hours from the time the first rescuers reached the crash site for more help to arrive. It would take many more to get everyone out.

But the weather forced rescue crews on the ground to go it alone.

Eight hours after the small plane went down, the last of the survivors was removed.

Henrietta Palmer did not survive. But now released from the hospital, the other three crash victims have nothing but praise for their rescuers.

"They bring us down from 9,800 or 10,000 foot in a severe storm and get us to the hospital, they did an excellent job," says pilot Skip Moreau.

"I just really want to say thanks to them all," says rescued passenger Tony Marsh. "I really want to say thank you. If they hadn't gotten to us when they did, we wouldn't be here right now. We would have died."