AUSTIN, Minn. -- Talking through tears, Lisa Primavera thanked two men and a teenager for saving her elderly parents during a blizzard more than a week ago.
Back from Florida, Primavera referred to Michael Fadden, Chris Stewart and Jared Hanson as lifesavers, saying they didn't just drive by her parents' car in the ditch like others might have done.
"I can't thank you enough," she said.
The Mower County Board honored the three good Samaritans with outstanding citizen awards.
Robert and Bessie Noble, the elderly couple, thanked the three personally at the meeting.
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"I don't know what we would've done without you," Bessie Noble told the trio while hugging each of them.
Mower County Sheriff Terese Amazi said the three probably saved the life of Robert Noble, whose ears still looked frost-bitten on Tuesday; he is expected to make a full recovery.
On the evening ofDec. 20, Stewart, 20, of Adams, Minn., and Fadden, 23, and Hanson, 15, both of rural Austin, found Bessie Noble in the couple's car, which had slid into a ditch on a gravel road north of Austin.
The Nobles, both 81 and from Austin, didn't have a cell phone, so Robert Noble had started walking to get help; he collapsed in a snowy ditch about a half mile from the car.
That's where Stewart, Fadden and Hanson found Noble, curled up with snow to his waist. They carried him into their truck and waited for authorities to arrive at the scene.
Noble's wife estimates he was outside for 30 minutes.
