A woman involved in a car accident in northern California was found alive after police used an app to search for her at the bottom of a steep 500-foot embankment.

The search began Monday afternoon when police officers were notified about a distress call sent from the OnStar satellite tracking system in Melissa Vasquez's 2012 Chevy Cruze.

Officers traveled to the area where the alert was pinpointed, but after two hours spent scouring the area, they found no signs of 28-year-old Vasquez or her car.

Early Tuesday morning, Vasquez's stepmother called police to report her missing when she never returned home. Officials then knew the situation was more serious than a faulty OnStar system distress call.

When officials arrived at Vasquez's home, they found her iPad among her belongings. After correctly guessing the password to the device, the police activated the Find My iPhone app to try and locate where she had steered off the embankment near Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose.

The Find My iPhone app uses a combination of locators including Wi-Fi hotspots, cell phone tower locations and the GPS satellite system to coordinate and track where the user is. The OnStar system in Vasquez's and other General Motors cars relies on the GPS system alone to locate cars.

After the app detected a more precise location, police contacted other officials in the area to search the new area of the ravine. A sheriff's deputy discovered her car in a steep part of the embankment around 5:30 a.m.

Police found Vasquez ejected from her car lying face down, and radioed for a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter to retrieve her. She was airlifted to a nearby hospital where she is being treated for her injuries from the crash.

"I am amazed that occurred," Campbell Police Capt. Gary Berg said about finding the woman through her phone's app. "I hate to think what the outcome would [otherwise] have been."