A California woman who says she
called 911 to report spotting Sherri Papini on a rural California roadside before police rescued the missing California mom early Thanksgiving morning says Papini “
was looking panicked and frightened.”
“I saw this woman
with long blonde hair in the right shoulder of the freeway and she was
waving a piece of fabric that looked like a shirt, waving it up and down trying to flag someone down,” the woman, Alison Sutton, tells PEOPLE. “It was obvious: She needed help.”
Sutton and her 14-year-old daughter had already been on the road for eight hours en route to a Thanksgiving celebration.
They were traveling north between 70 and 80 miles per hour when they passed Papini standing on the shoulder of Interstate 5 in rural Yolo County.
“I was going so fast, it was like she came out of nowhere. It startled me,” says Sutton. “
She was really close to the side of the road. I said to my daughter, ‘I could have hit her,’ ” if she had swerved.
Sutton adds: “
I remember thinking she must be cold, because whatever she was wearing didn’t look like it was warm enough for the conditions outside. It was probably in the mid-30’s.”
Unsure of where she was, Sutton drove a few miles and then pulled over to call 911.
