Viktoria Zaribina went missing on January 13. She was last seen at her school in Uglegorsk, Russia. The girl is said to have gotten lost on the way home and ended up in an icy snow storm, Russian newspapers report Komsomolskaya Pravda in The Siberian Times.
The authorities and a group of volunteers went looking for Viktoria en masse. After more than eighteen hours, a golden tip came in: someone had seen Viktoria playing with a stray dog in the garden of an apartment building, about 800 meters from her house.
The police found Viktoria there. She had taken shelter under a low balcony as she hugged the stray. “I was constantly cuddling the fluffy and warm dog to keep myself alive,” she later explained.
According to the Russian media, ASTV, Viktoria was taken to hospital with hypothermia symptoms, but was able to return home the same day.
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