Abducted woman ingeniously devises a plan to save herself from her kidnapper

People often lose their wits when they fall victim to dangerous situations like kidnapping or face an assailant. But an unnamed woman from Arizona was able to remain calm and devise an effective plan to free herself when she was allegedly abducted by a man in 2023. The man, identified as 41-year-old Jacob Wilhoit, posed as an Uber driver in the area of the state, per NBC News. The woman was reportedly taken captive from a neighborhood in Phoenix and was fortunately rescued by the authorities and reunited with her family. The details of the rescue were uploaded on NBC's 12 News YouTube channel.

However, she wouldn't have possibly made it back home if she had not slipped a note to a customer at a gas station begging for help. "Help. Call 911," the woman's chilling note read, per the news outlet. She also added an important detail that she was in a blue Honda van and the vehicle was heading "towards Kingman Las Vegas." The Yavapai County Sheriff's Office stated this situation through a press release. The sheriff's office revealed that Wilhoit was arrested while crossing an interstate in Seligman, which lies in the northwestern part of Arizona.

The new outlet mentioned how Wilhoit allegedly restrained the woman before driving towards Las Vegas. When they stopped at a Chevron station in Seligman, the woman saw an opportunity to slip a handwritten note to a customer that became her key to freedom. The customer promptly dialed 911 and informed the authorities, providing them with the woman's description and necessary details. Wilhoit was later taken into custody without incident and faced charges of threatening, aggravated assault, unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping and other crimes, as mentioned by the sheriff's office.

The sheriff's office added that at the time when the woman was allegedly taken captive, Wilhoit was wearing a wig and was posing as a ride-share driver who picked her up from a car dealership at 7 a.m. Even though the authorities couldn't figure out a motive behind the abduction of the woman, they deduced that Wilhoit was "known" to the victim. The woman's mother also identified Wilhoit as a person of interest when she reported her missing daughter. They even retrieved multiple firearms from Wilhoit's possession. Sheriff's office spokesperson Kristin Green told CBS affiliate AZFamily that the incident shows the importance of calling 911. "We're confident that she'll get through it. And obviously, she wants to see this man put away. She's still in a state of shock about all of this," Green added.

In another similar story, a much younger girl was able to save herself from a dangerous situation after using a secret "code word" method taught to her by her family. "At 3:45 p.m., an 11-year-old girl was walking with a friend near a park in the neighborhood when a man driving a white SUV pulled up next to them. The man told the girl that her [brother was] in a serious accident and she needed to go with him," a Facebook post from the Pinal County Sheriff's Office read. "The child asked the man what the code word' was, but he did not know it and drove off."

"Kudos to the parents of this child for having a code word and talking to their children about stranger danger," Sheriff Mark Lamb mentioned in the post. "We hope by putting this out, it will encourage parents to have that conversation and create a plan with their children so they know what to do if they are in that situation." The young girl also spoke to Good Morning America and shared what was going through her mind during the encounter. "I was terrified," she said. "I was terrified that my brother was in an actual accident, that he could be hurt." But she suspected that the man had some negative intentions and her suspicion was proven right when he couldn't say the code word set by her family.