Spunky, independent and active, most people wouldn't realize Cheryl Ann Blandon is paralyzed on the lower half of her body.
"My mom is go, go, go," Blandon's daughter Cheri Linner tells NBC 7. "She doesn't stop, even with her handicap."
Blandon, 72, was found around 3 a.m. Monday morning after being trapped inside her car for roughly 12 hours when it rolled off an embankment near Fallbrook Sunday afternoon.
Brandon fell asleep at the wheel and drifted off the road going about 20 m.p.h., California Highway Patrol (CHP) said.
The car flipped on its roof and wasn’t easily visible from the road, according to CHP.
Linner says her mother is a creature of habit and when she didn't return home Sunday night she got worried.
"She pulls over sometimes on the side of the road and takes a nap when she is tired, so we thought maybe she did that," Linner explains. "We searched all the parking lots in the area she was."
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Linner says she drove up and down Rice Canyon where her mother had crashed at least 10 times.
She filed a missing person report and because of her mother's medical history, she feared the worst.
"Like clockwork, she always tells us where she's at we just knew something was very wrong," Linner adds.
Blandon was able to unbuckle after the accident. She had food and water with her in the car.
Finally, a friend who had been looking as well noticed a damaged chain-link fence. An eighth of a mile away Linner found her mother's car.
"I don't want to cry, I love her she's my best friend," Linner says of the woman who helped find her mother. "I am really grateful. If it wasn't for her I wouldn't have found her as soon as I did."
Blandon was taken to Palomar Medical Center where doctors are are doing scans to make sure she didn't have a stroke while driving.
