She was lost and searching for Interstate 70 after taking a wrong turn while trying to beat a winter storm home. She also melted snow in a can on her dashboard during the day, and she rationed sweet rolls and Rice Krispie treats to two bites a day, wondering if she would have to eat her cat's food to keep from starving. “I was keeping myself very, very calm,” Stein said. "I'd been stuck at Eisenhower tunnel before, and I thought, 'I want to get out of here before that snow comes in.' “When my Rice Krispies treat was getting close, I thought, ‘It might be good,’ ” Stein said. "I kept thinking, 'I wonder what that would taste like,' she said. Of course, if you raise 5 kids, you know," she said with a smile. '” 
 
 Spur-of-the-moment hike 
 
 Dan Higbee and Katie Preston made plans to ski Saturday and were debating a trip to the mountains in Aspen or going to a resort in Eagle County. “We kept going, and it was kind of a little nerve-wracking — slipping and sliding,” Higbee said. But because one of its doors was propped open, they decided to make sure no one was inside. "I was never so glad to see anybody in my life," said Stein. “She had more food out for the cat than she did for herself,” Preston said. "And I was almost out of food." Instead of going to I-70, she accidentally drove deep into a rural mountainous area, getting her 2007 Nissan Sentra stuck at the end of a muddy dirt road. Stein said the only time she cried was on day two, when she saw a helicopter and thought it was searching for her. You just got to accept it." She’s right back to her normal self.” 
 
 Stein has five children, nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
– A messy car has its perks, as 85-year-old Ruby Stein discovered last week. While heading home to Akron, Colo., after a visit with her granddaughter on March 21, Stein took a wrong turn and ended up stuck 20 miles down an isolated mountain road with only her cat Nikki for company, reports 9 News. With no cell service, she honked her horn "until the battery ran down," Stein tells the Denver Post. Then the self-described "old farm girl" went to work. Using safety pins and a pile of old clothes in her backseat, she fashioned a blanket, then insulated her car's doors and windows. For each of the next five days, she ate only four bites of a Rice Krispies snack and what was left of a sweet roll, plus snow. Just when her stash of dry cat food started to look appetizing, help arrived. Dan Higbee and Katie Preston had at first planned to go skiing Saturday, but decided to go for a hike at the last minute after finding the ski area's parking lots at capacity. When they couldn't find a trail, they changed directions and suddenly came across Stein's car. "I was never so glad to see anybody in my life," Stein tells the Denver Channel. "We were meant to be there," adds Preston. The hikers took Stein back to her granddaughter's house in Gypsum and family members, who'd been searching for her along the I-70 corridor, "just cried," Stein's granddaughter says. Stein was checked by paramedics but found to be unscathed. "I was keeping myself very, very calm," she says. "I knew I either had to or it was over with. I have too many great grandkids and grandkids. I didn't want it to be over with."