UPDATE: Jones County woman improving after river rescue

Posted on Aug 18, 2009 by Cindy Hadish.

Jeanne Schnepp

The woman rescued Monday from the Wapsipinicon River is keeping quiet about her ordeal.

Family members of Jeanne Schnepp have been trying to fill in her story to a multitude of interested media outlets.

On Tuesday, her son, Corey Schnepp, described her ordeal.

After strong Wapsipinicon River currents pulled her downstream, snagging her tiny inflatable raft on a pile of brush, Schnepp, 63, was forced to wait for a rescue.

On one side of her was the river bank that rose 8 to 10 feet high, too steep to scale; on the other, a span of water estimated at 40 feet wide.

Even if she could have escaped the log jam that entangled her raft, she was unsure of the water’s depth.

Schnepp survived with two cans of Mountain Dew and a bottle of water from Wednesday, when she went fishing, until Monday, when volunteer firefighter Larry Williams of Wyoming also went fishing and saw her arm waving.

Search boats had plied the river for days, but until Williams spotted the raft, no one knew what had happened to the woman from the Jones County village of Hale.

“It was a long five days for us,” Corey Schnepp, 35, of Olin, said Tuesday at St. Luke’s Hospital, where his mother was moved out of the intensive care unit and into a regular medical room. “I can only imagine what it was like for her.”

Schnepp described his mother as a quiet woman who preferred to stay out of the spotlight, even as shows like Good Morning America prodded her for an interview.
The ordeal left Schnepp dehydrated and sunburned, both front and back. She only had soft foods to eat after arriving at the hospital.

Corey Schnepp said the family tried to visit Williams after they left the hospital late Monday.

“He deserves a great big thanks,” he said.

Schnepp was in stable condition Tuesday. Her family didn’t know how long she would be hospitalized.

As for her future, Corey Schnepp doubted it would involve one of her favorite pastimes.

“We already told her, she’s not allowed to go fishing,” he said, “at least by herself.”