Jasmine Viel is an award winning news anchor and reporter who has spent more than a decade working in TV on the West Coast.
A teen in Ventura County is recovering after being bitten by a rattlesnake while mountain biking two weeks ago.
Bailey Vanden Bossche is still on crutches, her foot swollen as she tells the story of when she had to be rescued and rushed to the hospital.
The 14-year-old said she and her friend were biking on the Wendy Trail in Newbury Park in the early evening when she fell off her bike and into the bushes. She said she didn't realize it at first, that she had been bitten.
"I got up, my ankle was bleeding, but I didn't feel a bite. I thought I broke my ankle," she said.
That quickly changed when her condition started to spiral. "My face started tingling, and then my hearing went out, and I like couldn't, my body just didn't feel good," Bossche said.
Her friend Zoey Bark said it didn't look like she had been bitten by a snake. "It just looked like she got a cut on it cause you couldn't see two holes, you could only see like one."
The girls were a couple of miles from home and used Bossche's cellphone to call her dad, the minutes ticking by. "It was scary because we were by ourselves, and her phone was like, her dad couldn’t track her location, so I was scared that he couldn’t find us," Bark said.
Her father did find them, and Bossche couldn’t move, so they called 911. Firefighters hiked in to reach her and rushed her to the hospital, where she was given anti-venom.
Her grandfather, Bryan Vanden Bossche, was a firefighter for 30 years and knows the dangers well. "You could see her face distorted, and the muscles going in different ways. So it was a very scary moment," he said, noting she was the third bite that week.
"There are issues with anti-venom. They could have adverse reactions to that, allergic reactions to that; also they could have blood clotting and different things, so they keep a really good eye on her," he said.
Bossche says the encounter with the rattler hasn't scared her off the trails for good.
But it brings a new awareness.
"Probably not going on the trail with the cut was, or try to fall in the brush," Bossche said.
Medical experts say if a rattlesnake bites, keep the area still, at or below heart level, do not apply ice, do not cut the wound, and do not suck out the venom - and seek help immediately.
Last month, a 25-year-old Costa Mesa man died of a rattlesnake bite while mountain biking in Irvine, on the Quail Hill Trailhead.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there are between 7,000 and 8,000 bites a year in the U.S., with about five people dying from them.