A woman in need of a heart transplant was transported by police on a long, harrowing journey to a hospital in Ohio after getting stuck in the lake-effect storm that pummeled Chautauqua County this weekend,

With a dangerous snowstorm hitting New York, state troopers helped a woman needing a heart transplant to a small airplane for a flight to the Cleveland Clinic.

A couple embarked on an approximately 260-mile drive just as a snowstorm struck over Thanksgiving weekend, New York State Police said, but their journey wasn’t holiday related. The pair from Rochester was en route to the Cleveland Clinic for the 64-year-old woman’s life-saving heart transplant, state troopers said.