Stuck in the twisted wreckage of his car at the bottom of a steep hill, Giovanetti endured four days in sultry heat before managing to crawl out of the wreck and drag himself up the hill despite a head wound and broken ribs.

Raised Catholic, Giovanetti said he no longer goes to church. But he said he prayed mightily when he first woke up after the wreck and gave thanks whenever a cool breeze blew through his car.

"Everybody tells me I'm really lucky. I felt somebody else was helping me - like it was a team. Someone had a reason to let me go. I was in a bad way. Someone had to pull me out of there," Giovanetti said.

Out of the hospital and recovering at his parent's home in the Pittsburgh suburb of Oakmont, Giovanetti still looks terrible. An ugly purple bruise covers the right side of his face.

Giovanetti was returning from Virginia. He had dropped off a friend before heading for home in Apalachin, New York. Unemployed since April, Giovanetti was hoping to continue his search for work as an avionics technician while his wife, Tricia, son Nicholas and twin girls Cloe and Monique were in North Carolina.

Giovanetti, 39, lost control on a patch of gravel Aug. 11 while trying to get onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike, shooting across the pavement and over a guard rail. His car launched into the air and landed about 100 feet down a steep, boulder-strewn hill, state police said.

The accident tore the front off Giovanetti's car, which came to rest on its crushed roof. The passenger side of the car was buried in dirt and rocks. He regained consciousness upside down, his face mashed against the broken windshield. He unlatched his seat belt and fell against the steering wheel.

"I don't remember it hurting. I remember it was very hot," he said. "It was very difficult uprighting myself."

Giovanetti spent his first day yelling and banging a piece of metal from the wreck against the body of the car. Nobody noticed.

He spent the second day in a failed effort to wiggle out of the mangled wreck.

Bathed in gasoline fumes and suffering from a banged-up head, Giovanetti had nightmares during the ordeal.

On the third day, Giovanetti dragged himself halfway out of the wreckage, where he rigged a rubber mat to direct rainwater into plastic water bottles.

By the morning of the fourth day, Giovanetti realized no one would come for him. Weakened, he dragged himself backward, crablike, up the steep hillside, gripping rocks in his fists to protect his hands from broken glass.

When he finally made it, Giovanetti was too weak to even pull himself over the guard rail. He lay on the side of the road waving in futility at passing cars and trucks until finally good Samaritans pulled over to help.

"It seemed mostly like a long, bad day. I didn't know it was four days until I got to the top," Giovanetti said. "I just kept trying to get out. I wanted to see my kids."