Woman credits cellphone, troopers with saving her from moose attack

Editor’s note: A version of this story in Tuesday’s Frontiersman was cut off. The story has been updated and is printed in full here.

LAZY MOUNTAIN — Caren della Cioppa said she feels she owes her life to her cellphone and Alaska State Troopers.

“That moose could have killed me,” della Cioppa said two days after she was attacked by a cow moose with a pair of calves on Monday while trimming rose bushes on the edge of her property off Mile 3 of Clark-Wolverine Road. “She came out of nowhere and knocked me down as I was bending over with my clippers. I curled up in a fetal position and she came back around and stomped on my chest. She sounded like a freight train. She must have stomped on my head, too, because I have a hoof print on my forehead.”

Unable to move much because of broken ribs and a broken collarbone, the 65-year-old marathon runner carefully reached in her jeans pocket and pulled out her cellphone, she said Wednesday while recovering at home.

Della Cioppa said she has always carried her cellphone with her — just in case of an emergency — and is grateful she had it Monday.

“I wasn’t even sure where the moose was at that point, so I just stayed in the fetal position as I called 911,” said the former longtime paramedic. “I wasn’t sure what my injuries were, but I knew I couldn’t have crawled out of there on my own because there were lots of thorns and I was in a lot of pain.”

When troopers arrived at her Heidi Drive home a few minutes later, they found della Cioppa about 100 feet from her house on a trail she’d made around the perimeter of her 2.5-acre property.

That call came in at 12:36 p.m., and as troopers approached her to assess her condition, the cow charged again, jumping over her body to try to get to them, della Cioppa said.

“I’m not sure how close she was when she jumped over me, but when they shot her she dropped about 10 feet away from me,” she said. “I think they saved my life.

Troopers were forced to shoot the moose, said AST spokeswoman Megan Peters.

“When we got there she was in her yard,” Peters said. “As troopers were rendering assistance to her, they were charged as well and one of the troopers shot the moose.”

Della Cioppa said she doesn’t think the moose gave troopers any other option. She said that while she feels bad for the two calves, she doesn’t feel responsible for their mother’s death.

“They had done everything right,” she said. “I should have been more aware of my surroundings, though, when I was out there trimming the trail. I guess I was so caught up in that task I didn’t look around enough. I had no idea she was even in the area.”

She said one of her friends is a member of the Alaska Moose Federation and is bottle-feeding the calves.

“I’m going to go visit them,” she said as she recovers with a sling, a bandage around her chest and plenty of Percocet. “They are so cute. I’m also going to donate some money to the federation to help care for them.”

She said she never saw the calves during the attack or afterward.

This was the third time she’d been charged by moose on her property, she said. The first time was during an Easter egg hunt with her nieces, but that time the animal backed off before it got close to them.

The second time was a little scarier as a cow chased her to her front door after she’d been watering her flower planters nearby.

“If my door hadn’t been open, she probably would have gotten me,” she said.

Della Cioppa, a pilot who lives in Deadhorse half the year to monitor the weather for the Federal Aviation Administration, said she’s determined to participate in four marathons coming up — the first being July 9 at Hatcher Pass.

“I’ll probably have to walk that one, but I’ll run the Big Wild Life race in Anchorage in August, and for sure the Nike Women’s Marathon Oct. 16 in San Francisco,” she said.

Della Cioppa, who celebrated her birthday Tuesday while recovering at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, has spent the last seven years helping raise funds for the National Leukemia and Lymphoma Society through the local Team in Training (TNT) organization.

The cause is near and dear to her because she lost her father to colon cancer in 1976.

Last summer, she rode her 20-year-old bicycle about 800 miles from her office at Prudhoe Bay to Palmer to raise funds for an upcoming TNT marathon. She said she ended up raising $10,000 and is now trying to raise $3,600 to participate in a TNT marathon in Savannah, Ga., in November.

She said she believes being in shape probably helped her survive the moose attack and is assisting in her recovery.

“One thing I’m really noticing now is that my abdominal muscles are really helping me because that’s the only way I can sit up,” she said, adding that getting so many well wishes from friends and family through Facebook, emails and phone calls over the last few days has made her even more grateful to be alive. “It made spending my birthday in the hospital a lot more tolerable. But at least I lived to have another birthday.”

Andrew Wellner contributed to this report. Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.