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LA couple rescued after car plunges 300 feet into remote California canyon, thanks to iPhone 14's SOS feature

Within 30 minutes of the crash, Cloe Fields and her boyfriend Christian Zelada were rescued in a helicopter from the Special Enforcement Bureau

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: After veering off a California highway, going over a cliff, and plummeting 300 feet before coming to a stop upside down in a remote canyon, Cloe Fields and her boyfriend, Christian Zelada, are lucky to be alive, thanks to a new iPhone 14 feature. Zelada stopped the couple's leisurely mountain drive near their Glendale home so that another vehicle could pass. Their Hyundai Elantra veered off the Angeles Forest Highway and fell backward down a precipice in a matter of seconds.

Their car landed on its roof after falling nearly 300 feet into Monkey Canyon. Fields' iPhone 14 had already used cutting-edge technology to automatically detect the accident and send an SOS call via satellite to an Apple emergency relay center, which quickly informed authorities of the emergency and its site, despite the fact that there was no cell service in the narrow canyon. Fields discovered the phone about 10 feet from the scene.

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"All we could see was trees, dirt, and smoke, and we were hitting trees," Fields, 23, tells People. "Then we felt the rolling and we were upside down. We looked at each and checked each other, and all we had were some scratches," Fields says. "Then my first initial thought was 'Where's my phone?'" Within 30 minutes a helicopter from the Special Enforcement Bureau (SEB) of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's high-risk rescue teams was on its way to the Canyon.

The team descended tactical medics and used a rope to bring the duo to safety while the helicopter hovered overhead. Authorities uploaded a video of the dramatic rescue in the Angeles National Forest to social media. "I was hyperventilating and crying at the same time," Fields told the outlet of the time he was being rescued. "They're like, 'You're okay, you're alive, you're fine. It was so fast that I was like, I can't believe this happened." The pair was airlifted to Huntington Hospital in Pasadena where they were treated for minor facial abrasions by medical professionals. "It felt like you were in a grueling workout," Zelada, 24, who also claimed that his entire body was painful shared.

"Vehicle 250 feet over the side, Monkey Canyon, Angeles Forest. Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Air Rescue 5 on scene to conduct the rescue. LASD SEB Tactical Medics deployed and hoisted 2 victims out of the canyon. Airlifted to a trauma center. Saving lives priority 1," Special Enforcement Bureau - LASD posted on Twitter. "Additional video of Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Air Rescue 5 conducting a rescue in Monkey Canyon, Angeles Forest this afternoon. Saving lives priority 1."