A woman whose car flipped 500 yards down a remote ravine in northern California was rescued today after her family reported her missing. And her rescue was enabled in part thanks to a quick-thinking police officer. 
 
 Melissa Vasquez was ejected from her vehicle after she crashed in the mountains near San Jose, about twenty miles from where she lives in Campbell, California, police said. Campbell police were alerted of a possible crash on Monday by the car's on-board OnStar security system, but couldn't locate the woman's vehicle, police said. 
 
 "During the investigation, one of our officers asked her stepmom about her iPhone," Sgt. Gary Berg told ABC News today. "So the officer logged on to the Find My iPhone app and unbelievably he was able to guess her password and log into her account. And at that point, he located the address where her phone was showing on GPS." 
 
 California Highway Patrol brought in a helicopter and pulled the woman to safety today. She had been ejected from her car and was laying face down in the ravine, police said. 
 
 It's not yet clear how the accident happened, and police are investigating. Vasquez, 28, is being treated for injuries at a hospital, police said. 
 
 "It's pretty remarkable," Berg said. "I would hate to think of the outcome had we not been able to log on." 
 
 OnStar told ABC News it is aware of the incident and looking into what happened. 
 
 "We are saddened by this incident involving one of our subscribers," the company said in a statement. "Our subscribers' safety and security is OnStar's utmost concern. We are currently conducting a complete investigation, including information we have received from our call centers, our cellular network provider, our engineering team and the local authorities to better understand what occurred." 

 A California car crash victim was impossible to find until a tech-savvy police officer made a crucial decision to track her down using an iPhone.California Highway Patrol officers located the missing woman's Chevy Cruze at about 5:30 Tuesday morning. The missing car was 500 feet down a ravine off Mt. Hamilton Road in South Bay.A Coast Guard helicopter was called while officers walked down the embankment through heavy shrubbery. They found 28-year-old Melissa Vasquez, who had been ejected from the car, and had been missing for 17 hours."The officers on the scene said she was face down. She was awake, coherent, and she was speaking to officers," explained CHP Officer Ross Lee.Rescuers put Vasquez into an airlift basket and the chopper hoisted her out of the ravine. She was in the ICU after suffering injuries to her legs and her abdomen.The CHP says they're still investigating the incident and they don't know why the car ended up in the ravine. Drugs and alcohol, they say, do not appear to be a factor.But the real detective work began sometime after 2 p.m. on Monday, when the car's OnStar program detected a crash after two of the tires were ripped off the car. OnStar monitors told Campbell police the car was at Highway 17 and Camden Avenue, near Vasquez' home. Officers responded, but police heard and saw nothing. OnStar later updated the location to downtown San Jose. Again, police found nothing.At 3 a.m. Tuesday, Vasquez's stepmother called police, saying her daughter was missing.The officer credited with finding her is back on the job after a very busy morning."I'm kind of known around the department as kind of a tech geek," Campbell police Officer David Cameron said.Cameron is a shy and humble man. He spoke for the first time on Tuesday about his crucial role in finding Vasquez.It wasn't until 3 a.m. Tuesday when Cameron went to Vasquez's house and found her iPad that he realized he could use Apple's Find My iPhone app to track her. But first, he had to crack all of her pass codes."I made an educated guess based on a series of common numbers people use for passwords and on the third attempt I was able to get in," Cameron said.Then he remotely turned on her phone's location finder. Vasquez meantime, was miles away, thrown from her car, lying face down and hurt. In just minutes, Cameron had a read on her location and just 20 minutes later rescuers were lifting her into a U.S. Coast Guard chopper."I think somebody was looking out for her. Things fell in place and had those things not fallen in place, it could have been a totally different story," Cameron said.At Regional Medical Center, Vasquez family rushed to her side and made an emotional plea."We would ask for prayers and ask that you respect the family's privacy," Stephanie Valdez, Melissa's cousin, said.Cameron plans to visit Melissa in a few days.Meantime, OnStar says its investigating why the system failed.Apple does not market the find my iPhone feature to police, but it has been used hundreds of times by officers to find stolen devices and this may be the first time it's been used to save someone's life.If you have an apple device -- an iPhone, iPad or a Mac -- you can use the Find My iPhone feature to locate your device on a map. It'll even play a sound so you can track it down. And if you think your phone was stolen or lost, you can lock it and then track it. Or just erase all the information on the phone. All you have to do is log into your iCloud account and activate the app. 

 A 28-year-old woman from Campbell whose car tumbled hundreds of feet down an embankment on Mount Hamilton east of San Jose was rescued and taken to a hospital Tuesday morning after she spent more than 12 hours stuck and injured, officials said. 
 
 In the end, police said, the search for where the car crashed was both complicated and aided by location-based technology. 
 
 On Monday afternoon, just after 2 p.m., Campbell police officers received a report from General Motors’ OnStar system saying there had been a rollover accident involving Melissa Vasquez’s Chevrolet Cruze in the area of White Oaks Road and Shelley Avenue in Campbell, said Capt. Gary Berg. 
 
 That was just a couple of blocks from the woman’s home. 
 
 Officers spent two hours searching the area, Berg said. But the pegged location wasn’t right. Police had OnStar honk the car horn remotely, to no avail. A second strategy — having officers run sirens in different locations to see if they could be heard over the OnStar system — also failed. 
 
 A knock on Vasquez’s door got no response. And the car wasn’t there. 
 
 Officers then contacted Vasquez’s cell company, which provided a location of her phone within a 7-mile radius of downtown San Jose, Berg said. Authorities were still unable to locate the car. Campbell police officers broadcast the vehicle’s description to all agencies in the county, he said. 
 
 Then, just before 3 a.m. Tuesday, Campbell police officers received a missing person’s report from Vasquez’s stepmother, with whom she lives, officials said. She said she hadn’t heard from her. 
 
 Officer Dave Cameron met with the stepmother and asked if Vasquez had Find My iPhone, an app that allows you to locate your misplaced iPhone using cell signals. The stepmother responded that Vasquez owned an iPad — but she didn’t know where it was. 
 
 So Cameron called the cell company, which could tell the iPad was in the Campbell home. Soon, the stepmother found the tablet computer — but it was locked. 
 
 “So I made an educated guess, based on a series of common numbers people use for passwords,�? Cameron told reporters. Cameron is a SWAT team member and accident reconstruction specialist but acknowledged that he’s known within the department as “kind of a tech geek.�? 
 
 “Amazingly, Officer Cameron was able to guess the correct password after only 3-4 tries using his knowledge of commonly used password combinations,�? officials said. 
 
 The Find my iPhone app was also locked. But the same password opened it up. Cameron activated the “lost phone�? feature and saw a map of the location of Vasquez’s iPhone — 14555 Mount Hamilton Rd. 
 
 “It gave a very small search area,�? Cameron said. He noticed that Vasquez’s cell phone only had 12 percent battery life left. 
 
 “You think about it. If we didn’t have that specific location I would hate to think what the outcome would be without him logging into that account,�? Berg said. 
 
 Officers from San Jose and deputies from Santa Clara County responded to the area soon after receiving the information from Campbell police. 
 
 Less than 20 minutes later, at around 5:30 a.m., officers located Vasquez on Mount Hamilton. The car, which had plummeted about 500 yards off an embankment, was on its roof, said California Highway Patrol Officer Ross Lee. The victim was outside the car, face-down but conscious. 
 
 A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter responded and airlifted Vasquez to Regional Medical Center of San Jose with major injuries, including to her abdomen and legs. She is expected to survive, Ross said. Relieved family members met with Vasquez at the hospital and thanked rescuers. 
 
 General Motors said in a statement Tuesday that it was looking into what happened with the OnStar system and was “saddened by this incident involving one of our subscribers.�? 
 
 “Our subscribers’ safety and security is OnStar’s utmost concern. We are currently conducting a complete investigation, including information we have received from our call centers, our cellular network provider, our engineering team and the local authorities to better understand what occurred,�? the company said. 
 
 Cameron said he was heartened that the technology that was available helped save Vasquez. 
 
 “Sixteen years ago, that wouldn’t have happened,�? he said. “It would have been phone calls and guesses and maps.�? 
 
 Chronicle staff writers Henry K. Lee and Demian Bulwa contributed to this blog post.
– A California woman can credit her iPhone and a police force's "tech geek" with saving her life after a car crash left her stuck hundreds of feet down a ravine. Though OnStar alerted police that Melissa Vasquez's car was involved in a rollover accident Monday afternoon, the provided location, near her Campbell home, turned up no sign of the vehicle, ABC 11 reports. When contacted by police, Vasquez's cell company pinpointed her phone within a broad 7-mile radius of San Jose's downtown. Officers were still stumped when Vasquez's stepmother reported the 28-year-old missing 13 hours later, the San Francisco Chronicle reports—that is, until Officer David Cameron visited Vasquez's home, learned she owned an iPad, and had an idea. Another call to the cell company revealed the iPad was in the home; it was soon found, but it was locked. "I made an educated guess based on a series of common numbers people use for passwords and on the third attempt I was able to get in," Cameron says. He turned on Apple's Find My iPhone feature and had Vasquez's location within minutes. Vasquez, whose iPhone battery was at 12%, was found "face down" in the ravine in San Jose's mountains, her phone out of reach, ABC News reports. Though Vasquez had been thrown from her vehicle, which was on its roof with two tires ripped off, she was "awake, coherent, and she was speaking to officers," a cop explains. She was airlifted to the hospital with "major injuries" to her legs and abdomen but is expected to survive. "I think somebody was looking out for her. Things fell in place and had those things not fallen in place, it could have been a totally different story," says Cameron, who plans to visit Vasquez soon. (It's not the first time an Apple product has come to the rescue.)