( CNN ) -- No one expected to find Donna Molnar alive . Donna Molnar 's body temperature was 30 degrees Celsius when rescuers found her Monday . Searchers had combed the brutal backcountry of rural Ontario for the housewife from the city of Hamilton , who had left her home three days earlier in the middle of a blizzard to grocery shop . Alongside his search-and-rescue dog Ace , Ray Lau on Monday tramped through the thick , ice-covered brush of a farmer 's field , not far from where Molnar 's van had been found a day earlier . He kept thinking : Negative-20 winds ? This is a search for a body . `` Then , oh , all of a sudden , Ace bolted off , '' said Lau . `` He stooped and looked down at the snow and just barked , barked , barked . '' Lau rushed to his Dutch shepherd 's side . `` There she was , there was Donna , her face was almost totally covered except for one eye staring back at me ! '' he said . `` That was , 'Wow ! ' There was a thousand thoughts going through my head . It was over the top . '' With one ungloved hand near her neck , Molnar , 55 , mumbled and tried to scream as Lau yelled to other rescuers . Dressed in a leather coat , sweater , slacks and winter boots , Molnar was carefully extracted from a 3-foot-deep mound of snow that had apparently helped to insulate her . Watch how the rescuers found Molnar » . Then , rescuers got their second shock . `` She was lucid , and said , 'Wow . I 've been here a long time ! ' and then she apologized and said , ' I just wanted to take a walk , I 'm sorry to have caused you any trouble , ' `` said Staff Sgt . Mark Cox of the Hamilton Police Department , one of the leaders in the hunt . `` And we 're all thinking this is incredible , this is really something . '' `` I 've been doing search and rescue for seven years , and this is the wildest case I 've had in finding someone alive , '' he said . She was rushed to a hospital and immediately sedated to begin the agonizing steps of hypothermia treatment . `` I think the snow must have worked to trap her body heat , and that 's what really saved her , '' Cox said . `` This really speaks to what 's possible . '' David Molnar is calling his wife 's survival his `` Christmas miracle . '' He was n't able to speak with her immediately after she was taken to the hospital . But while she was under sedation , he leaned over her and whispered in her ear , `` Welcome back , I love you . '' `` My wife , you know , does n't pump iron . She is strong physically and spiritually , '' he said . `` When people say to me how do I explain how she survived , I said I believe God reached down and cradled her until the rescuers could find her , because there 's no rational explanation . '' In addition to hypothermia , Donna Molnar is being treated for severe frostbite , and her recovery will take months . But his wife 's condition was upgraded Wednesday from critical to serious . `` That may not sound like a great thing to everyone , but to us , that is the best news we could possibly get on Christmas Eve , '' David Molnar said . As for Ace , he 's still awaiting his reward : a T-bone steak . It 's the least that can be done for a dog who , in his own way , paid it forward . `` A while ago , Ace was rescued from a home where he did n't belong , and now he got to rescue someone . I ca n't describe the magnitude of that , what that means to me , '' Lau said . `` He 's definitely getting his steak . I 'm grocery shopping right now . ''
Donna Jean is missing after she left her home to go grocery shopping . Housewife had been buried in snow for 72 hours when a rescue dog found her . She 's in serious condition , being treated for hypothermia , severe frostbite . Dog , who had been rescued himself , will be rewarded with a T - bone steak .