Tanya Rider, 33, is suffering from kidney failure and sores from lying in the same position for a week and she could lose her leg, said Tom Rider, her husband.

"All I know is that she's here and she's alive, and that, in itself, is a miracle," he said. "She's alive after eight days. If God was going to take her, he would have taken her before that."

Tom Rider said he felt frustrated that investigators didn't begin the search earlier.

"Instead of looking at me as a suspect and thinking I buried her somewhere, go out and find her," he told reporters at a hospital news conference Friday morning. "And they did that, using her cell phone, which I think I suggested on Saturday when they told me they wouldn't start an investigation because she was an adult."

Tom Rider said he called a dispatcher on Sunday whom he credited with getting authorities to start the search.

"Then on Sunday, Operator No. 65 -- who I'd really like to meet -- he's the reason she's alive," he said.

Tanya Rider left work at a Fred Meyer grocery store in Bellevue on Sept. 19 but never made it home. When her husband couldn't reach her, he said, he called Bellevue police to report his wife missing.

Bellevue police took the report right away, but when they found video of Tanya Rider getting into her car after work, they told her husband the case was out of their jurisdiction and he should notify King County, he said.

Tom Rider said he tried that, but "the first operator I talked to on the first day I tried to report it flat denied to start a missing persons report because she didn't meet the criteria," he said.

"I basically hounded them until they started a case and then, of course, I was the first focal point, so I tried to get myself out of the way as quickly as possible. I let them search the house. I told them they didn't have to have a warrant for anything, just ask," he said.

Tom Rider said he also drove the route where his wife was found but didn't see any sign of a crash. He also offered a $25,000 reward for any information leading to her safe return.

Thursday morning, detectives asked him to come in to sign for a search of phone records. They also asked him to take a polygraph test.

"By the time he was done explaining the polygraph test to me, the detective burst into the room with a cell phone map that had a circle on it," Tom Rider said Friday. He said the detective started explaining the blip they had found and within minutes, news arrived that Tanya Rider had been found.

Her car had tumbled about 20 feet down a ravine and lay buried below heavy brush and blackberry bushes. The air bags deployed, but she was injured and trapped. Rescuers had to cut the roof off to get her out.

"I know there were delays (in finding her) because of red tape," Tom Rider said.

A King County Sheriff's spokesman expressed sympathy but said the agency followed standard procedure in the case.

"That's a terrible, terrible experience ... a heart-wrenching experience, and my heart goes out to him," Deputy Rodney C. Chinnick said Friday.

"It's not that we didn't take him seriously," Chinnick said. "We don't take every missing person report on adults. ... If we did, we'd be doing nothing but going after missing person reports."

Adults are entitled to privacy if they decide to do something out of the ordinary, and Chinnick said Rider's initial missing person report did not contain either of the two elements that would trigger an immediate search: evidence of foul play or unusual vulnerability such as age, mental condition or lack of critical medications.

"Not showing up at home is not illegal," he said.