NAMPA, Idaho — Penny Kay Clark, now 73, sees her trashed car on the side of a canyon wall near Melba for the first time since search and rescue crews found her alive last December.
To this day, Penny has no idea how she got there, but she feels strongly that she didn't drive there herself.
"I wouldn't have driven here, I didn't even know this was here," said Clark.
December 5, 2023
Penny began her day getting a key fob replacement for her car, 'Moxie,' as she and her late husband called it, at a dealership off Garrity blvd. Texting with her daughter, Heather, the simple errand ended up taking nearly three hours. A final text message sent by her daughter at 1:01 p.m. went unanswered.
Penny had left the dealership, turned on to the road, and that is the last thing she remembered.
"When I came to I was in the passenger seat of a vehicle that was not my vehicle. I could see the handle and I was trying to open it and it wouldn't unlatch. So, I used both hands to try to get a grip to open and I was saying 'someone let me out, someone let me out.' I don't ever remember getting out of that vehicle," she explained.
The next time Penny woke up, she was outside, on the cliffside in Melba, her car above her up the cliffside, jogging pants and underwear removed, with shoes and socks on.
Penny spent days going in and out of consciousness. Missing for four nights, she only remembers three. Over the course of the days in the Idaho winter, through wind and rain, Penny attempted to work her way down the cliff face.
"I was so cold. I was so alone."
The slope was steep and loose, thwarting her efforts to scoot down the cliffside. Penny tried to get into a better viewing window of the road below, Map Rock Road, waving for every car she could. Penny's late husband, Bruce, when talking about deer hunting, taught her that moving deer are deer that can be seen.
On the final night, "I just figured that was it, that I wasn't going to make it," Clark recalled.
All the while, Penny's daughter, Heather, was coordinating with police on her way from San Diego, frustrated with the process as they're both left with questions.
December 9, 2023
“Yeah, we came out here with the idea of finding some coyotes but we found something special," says Eddie Hower, one of the two men who found Penny's crashed car.
“We came out here, I parked my truck where it was now, and I think our first steps, I walked right here and that was our first time seeing the car. He couldn’t see it over from there, came over here, and that’s when we made the choice to go investigate,” continued Hower.
During their investigation, they found a fanny pack with a cell phone and ID. After climbing out, they looked up Penny Kay on Facebook to contact her that they had found, what they thought, was her stolen and junked car. The first result that came up was an article that said she was missing.
It wasn’t until the Canyon County Sheriff’s deputies came out and spotted Penny that Eddie and Chase even knew she was there.
Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue and the Canyon County Sheriff coordinated efforts to get Penny off the cliffside.
After days in the hospital, Penny get her strength back; and these memories. After weeks of failed attempts to connect with law enforcement, Idaho News 6 took their concerns straight to Nampa police.
Penny and her daughter are still concerned for their safety. "All I was asking was if the car was fingerprinted? Did they take up close pictures? Was there paint transfer? If anybody took pictures of anything other than this amazing search and rescue that Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue did, but after that, it was no response," said Penny's daughter, Heather.
"I'd say the most unsettling is to know that someone would do this, to think that someone could do this to me," concluded Clark.
In the days since Idaho News 6 has been able to tell Penny’s story to the police department, Penny, Heather, and the Nampa Police Department have been back in communication and an investigation is now ongoing.
