Woman found alive after falling overboard

Richard and Amy Nearhood (photo courtesy Toledo Blade)

A 52-year-old Temperance, Michigan, woman who fell into Lake Erie near the mouth of the River Raisin on Sunday was found alive a short time later suffering from advanced states of hypothermia. 

Amy Nearhood and her husband were traveling in a boat from Monroe, Michigan to the Ottawa River Yacht Club in Toledo when she fell overboard. She told sheriff’s deputies that she was at the rear of the vessel looking for a blanket when she was bumped into by another occupant and fell overboard.

Immediately after her husband reported her missing, boats and helicopters from the Monroe County Sheriff's Department and the U.S. Coast Guard began searching the lake near Monroe. Then, more than an hour after she was reported missing, an employee at the coal-fired plant in Monroe found Nearhood walking on the utility’s property where she had swam ashore.

Nearhood was taken to Mercy Hospital in Monroe.

Mrs. Nearhood told sheriff’s deputies that she was at the rear of the vessel looking for a blanket when she was bumped into by another occupant and fell overboard.