VIDA — Kevin Hadden would tell his wife, Beverly, to drive carefully on Highway 126 along the McKenzie River.

Over the years, the Haddens, who lived between Nimrod and Finn Rock, saw several accidents on the winding two-lane highway in the picturesque river valley.

“I always told her that we live in God’s country, but that is the devil’s highway,” Hadden said.

On May 12, Beverly Hadden died after the vehicle she was driving east on Highway 126 went off the road and landed in the McKenzie River.

The vehicle’s sole occupant, Hadden was able to get out of the vehicle. However, she was unable to overcome the river’s cold, fast moving current and get to shore.

It took more than an hour for McKenzie Fire & Rescue personnel to find Hadden and remove her from the river.

Hadden, 60, was transported by LifeFlight helicopter to PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield, where she was pronounced dead.

Nearly a month later, Kevin Hadden said he still doesn’t know what caused his wife’s vehicle to leave the highway, roll at least once and plunge down the 30-foot embankment to the river.

“That’s the mystery that we still are trying to figure out.” An autopsy showed that “she didn’t have a heart attack or stroke.”

Kevin Hadden said his wife worked in the child support division of the Oregon Department of Justice in Eugene. She was an excellent driver who never had an auto accident on the McKenzie Highway, he said.

Beverly Hadden was driving home in the evening when her vehicle left the highway on a straight segment of road. That stretch does not have guardrails, Hadden said. And there’s only a couple of feet from the white painted fog line to the edge of the road, he said.

“I don’t know if we will ever know why she lost control of the vehicle right there,” Hadden said.

There was another mystery connected to his wife’s death: The whereabouts of her vehicle.

Swept downstream, the 2011 Kia Sorrento was missing for 3Â 1/2 weeks.

On Wednesday, searchers found the sport utility vehicle in the river east of Ben and Kay Dorris Park, about 1Â 1/2 miles downriver from where it went in. Authorities were eager to find the vehicle because it poses an environmental threat to the river, plus it’s a hazard to boaters and other recreational river users.

The McKenzie is Eugene’s only source of water. The Eugene Water & Electric Board was following closely the search for the vehicle, and will monitor its removal, spokesman Joe Harwood said.

“Anytime we have a vehicle in the McKenzie, we need to determine if any of the gasoline, coolant, oil or transmission fluid has been released,” he said.

“It’s our understanding that the folks from McKenzie Fire & Rescue didn’t detect any releases, and didn’t see any (petroleum-based) sheen on the water.”

Even if all the fluids have escaped from the vehicle, the amounts mixed with the abundant river water would have been too small to pose a threat to Eugene’s water supply, Harwood said.

“Our source of drinking water was never in danger,” he said.

T&M Towing of Eugene is in charge of removing Hadden’s vehicle from the river. T&M Towing owner Tim Baumgartner said volunteers, including divers from the Lane County Sheriff’s Office and river guide Steve Schaefers, searched for the vehicle three times since Hadden’s death.

At first, divers concentrated on a deep area of the river near where the vehicle hit the water, but that produced nothing, Baumgartner said.

From a drift boat farther downstream, Schaefers reported seeing something light-colored under the water, but searchers didn’t initially pursue that lead because Hadden’s SUV was maroon-colored.

But on Wednesday, searchers returned to that area and determined the light colors under the water were from the KIA’s side airbags, which had inflated.

The SUV is submerged in the middle of the channel, 8 feet below the water’s surface, upriver from Ben and Kay Dorris Park, Baumgartner said. He said his company, with the help of the sheriff’s office divers, McKenzie Fire and Rescue and others, will remove the vehicle from the river in the next few weeks.

On weekends, the river is too busy with rafters, boaters and fishermen, so the extraction will take place on a weekday, Baumgartner said. It will be difficult to get the vehicle out of the river, he said.

To gain access to the river, Baumgartner said he will need permission to use river frontage on private property. The riverbank is overgrown with brush, Baumgartner said, so he also must get the landowner’s permission to clear the brush.

Divers will have to attach tow cables to the vehicle so it can be pulled to shore by tow truck winches. The depth and speed of water flowing around the vehicle makes it dangerous for the divers, Baumgartner said.

“It’s a bad situation,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hadden, 62, says his wife’s death is “like a nightmare that I can’t wake up from.” He described her as being someone who could “not stand the idea of anybody going without, or in need of something.”

She would donate to the Eugene Mission homeless shelter, Hadden said. Sometimes when she saw homeless people, she would stop at a supermarket and buy them food and blankets, he said.

“She was the kindest, most loving person,” Hadden said. “She was constantly doing for others.

“I’ve never met anybody like her in my life.”

Send emails to ed.russo@registerguard.com . Follow Ed on Twitter @edwardrusso .