ANDOVER — Jane Rich is recovering after suffering hypothermia and frostbite following a fall outside her home on a very cold Valentine’s Day.

“I’ve got second-degree burns on both my legs and my heels are the biggest problem. It’s just going to take time,” said Rich, 73, who retired Jan. 31 as pastor of the First Congregational Church of Andover for the past 23 years.

She described what happened that morning outside her home on Upper Main Street.

“I went out to do my usual Saturday routine, putting the stuff for the transfer station in my trunk,” she said. “I closed the trunk door. There was the littlest piece of ice that you can imagine on the (garage) floor. A shoe caught that little piece of ice and I fell and hit my head on a two by four.”

She has had both knees replaced and can’t get up on them, she said.

“So anytime I’ve gotten myself in a jam before, I just scooted on my butt. I figured my cellphone was on the kitchen table. So I scooted over to that door, which is through a breezeway, got a broom that was standing there and swept everything off the kitchen table and it wasn’t there. So then I said, well, Plan B,” she said.

“I scooted back to my car and tried to hit my OnStar (vehicle communications) button . . . When I couldn’t do that, by now a couple of hours had gone by, it was pretty cold that day,” she said.

“I had scooted along on my butt and my legs were all cold and my pants had come up,’ she said. “I uttered this prayer, ‘God, I can’t imagine that you want me to freeze to death in this garage. I think you have something more for me in life than this.’ Then I got the inspiration to roll down the driveway (about 75 feet) to the road,” she said.

“So I rolled down there. Somebody did go by me, but the snowbanks are so high,” she said. “A few minutes after that, Esau and Amber Cooper came along. And they almost went by me, too, but they looked in their rear-view mirror and saw my hand waving. They backed up, got out of their car, took off their coats and put them around me,” she said.

“They called the EMTs and, as luck would have it, the Andover gang was at the fire station doing something. They came and brought a sled with them. They loaded me in the sled and got me into the house. Andrea Swasey came along. She’s a nurse and knew exactly what to do. They got me into the house and they cut off my clothes. People here have seen things they should never see now,” she joked.

“Then Med-Care came and they hauled me to Rumford Hospital. I was pretty ignorant about the whole thing and I thought, well, they’ll thaw me out and I’ll be home in a couple of hours. Next thing I know, I’m in the ICU because I had lost muscle control and my core temperature was down to 94,” Rich said.

She had hypothermia as well as frostbite.

“What happens with that frostbite is that it’s the same thing as second-degree burns, so you get all these blisters,” she said. There are just one or two blisters now, “So I’m tied up here for at least another two weeks anyway.”

The experience, she said, has taught her one important lesson: “Cellphone, in your pocket, before you leave the house. That’s what I learned.

“And I also learned how good people are. Somebody comes in and does my laundry and somebody else comes and brings me the paper every morning,” she said.

“People from a church have come and we’ve had a little prayer thing. I have people from other churches praying for me. And today, I got a lovely little note from the Locke Mills Union Church,” Rich said.

This time recovering from her fall gives her a lot of time for reflection as well, she said.

“I came here in 1974, and I’ve had such opportunities here that I would not have had anyplace else. I was a selectman years ago, I ran for Register of Deeds and I did that for 20 years. I had the opportunity to fulfill my childhood dream of doing ministry. None of that stuff would have happened if I stayed in Jersey. I’m where I was meant to be,” Rich said.