A Montana woman who was the subject of an extensive search in the Hot Springs area after she was reported missing July 17 with her car abandoned was found last Thursday, dehydrated and sunburned but otherwise in good condition.
34-year old Jeannie Schweigert of Billings was found by a rancher near a stock tank not far from Hot Springs, but had little memory of what had happened or where she’d been the previous 10 days.
Schweigert’s car was found near a residence along Hwy 385 about 1.5-miles north of Hot Springs. The Fall River County Sheriff’s Office made multiple requests for information on social media, then conducted a ground and air search of the area.
Agencies taking part besides the Sheriff’s Office were both the Custer and Pennington County Search and Rescue, the Hot Springs Police Department and Volunteer Fire Department, and South Dakota Wildland Fire.
Their biggest lead came 5 days after Schweigert, director of sales marketing for a Billings firm, had been reported missing.
A Hot Springs-area man contact authorities and said he’d seen her walking along the highway and talked with her the day she was reported missing, but hadn’t learned until then she was listed as missing.
He said she was at the Friendshuh Game Production Area north of Battle Mountain and while she didn’t look dressed for hiking, she told him “she was fine and wanted to be one with nature for a bit.”
Schweigert’s father, John Schweigert said on social media that she was found lying next to a stock tank by a rancher who’d gone to see why the pump wasn’t working.
John Schweigert said sheriff’s deputies told him that his daughter had gone for a walk, got disoriented, and turned down the wrong road in an effort to find her car.
She told them she had little memory of what had happened over the 10 days she was missing, only that she knew she needed to find water.