ATLANTA -- A 53-year-old northwest Georgia woman is counting her blessings after surviving a night under the stars when she ran off the highway and crashed, as authorities tried to find her missing car by tracking her cell phone.

Jan Locklear of Lindale was returning home Friday night after visiting her daughter in Woodstock.

"I may have fallen asleep or just closed my eyes and the next thing I know is I'm sailing through the air," she said. Her Chevrolet Tahoe flew down a large embankment and crashed.

"I'm banged up," she said. "I have broken ribs but no other broken bones and my back is pretty sore."

Her daughter called the Cherokee County sheriff's office to report her mother missing when she failed to make it home.

Locklear's cell phone had flown out of the vehicle during the wreck, but sheriff's deputy Roger Smith contacted her cell phone provider and got a general location of where her last call had been made.

They were able to narrow the search area down to a five mile stretch of road.

Floyd County authorities began searching overnight. They found Locklear's wrecked vehicle, which couldn't be spotted from the road, but by then she was gone.

Locklear said she had grabbed a quilt from her Tahoe and started walking to the road, eventually spending the night on the steps of a church.

At one point she tried to flag down a truck driver.

"He waved at me and kept going," she said.

Then, after daylight, her brother-in-law, Gary Knowles, found her.

"I feel very blessed, Locklear said. "It just wasn't my time to go."

Her daughter, Jenny Williams, agreed.

"We are so blessed" Williams said. "The Lord is in the miracle-working business."

Lindale is near Rome, Ga., nearly 60 miles northwest of Atlanta.