KEY POINTS:
Fate led two European cyclists to Jessica Roberts' car, possibly saving her life, says a local involved with her discovery after she had been missing for 11 days.
The 28-year-old Cromwell woman was found safe and well near the Haast township on the West Coast on Tuesday after the tourists recognised her car from posters.
Ms Roberts' father, Rian Roberts, said yesterday she was "in remarkably good shape" considering she had been without food for some time. Her survival was "amazing".
Haast Wilderness Accommodation owner Ollie White said he was astonished when the pair, a Frenchman and a Swedish woman, asked him on Tuesday evening for a place to go running.
They had just cycled from Fox Glacier. "I thought, 'Jesus, you've just pedalled all the way from Fox."'
Mr White does not know why he pointed them towards the track where Ms Roberts was found.
"Normally I'd tell them to run up the road."
The pair soon returned to say they had found the car, which had featured on posters up and down the West Coast.
He alerted Constable Robin Manera and the four set off down the track.
Initially they found nothing and Mr White returned to the backpackers hostel with the tourists.
However, Mr Manera found Ms Roberts just a few minutes later after she heard him calling her name.
"I put it down to sheer bloody fate in essence," he said. "Why would I tell someone to go running up the track? Why would they remember [the poster] and think to tell someone?"
Ms Roberts had been missing from Cromwell since January 3.
She is now at Dunedin Hospital where her condition has been described as stable.
- NZPA
