Florida woman looking for stranger who saved her life after car flipped into canal
By Ari Hait
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VERO BEACH, Florida (WPBF) — A woman in Vero Beach is searching for the hero who saved her life after she flipped her car into a canal over the weekend.
Hannah Spector was driving home around 4 a.m. Saturday when she lost control of her car on Indian River Boulevard near 12th Street in Vero Beach.
“I don’t know if I knew that I was upside down, really,” Spector said. “I knew that I was very disoriented.”
But what she knew for sure was there was water pouring in through the busted windshield, getting higher and higher in the car.
“As soon as I get my seatbelt off, I fall into water at this point,” Spector said. “I’m wet. I’m soaking wet. And I’m like, ‘I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get out.’”
Spector tried all the doors but found they were jammed shut.
She had nowhere to go.
“And I’m kind of just panicking,” she said. “This can’t be how I go out. This can’t be my time.”
Spector said she accepted that she was going to die.
And that’s when she saw headlights.
“I thought it was a miracle. I didn’t think it was real,” Spector said. “I kind of thought it was after (I died).”
But it was real.
It was a woman who had stopped.
She came to Spector’s car and talked to her, kept her calm while she called for help.
Another woman nearby also called 911 and can be heard talking to Spector’s hero.
“Hon is there anybody in there?” the woman asked the Good Samaritan. “How many? One? Is she hurt real bad?”
About a minute after that call, first responders arrived and pulled Spector to safety.
But by then, the Good Samaritan was gone.
Spector never got to talk to her.
She doesn’t even know her name.
“You have really given me hope in humanity,” Spector said. “I thank you for that.”
Spector said she also believes her father was looking out for her that night.
He passed away recently, but Spector said the first sheriff’s deputy on scene had the same first name as her father.
And the Good Samaritan worked at the same place her dad did.
And one of the few things that she was able to salvage from the wreck was a ring that belonged to her dad.
In the end, Spector walked away from the crash with only some scratches and bruises.
She credits her father and a stranger who she wants to find.
“That was definitely the turning point, because without her, it could definitely be a very different story,” she said.
If you can help identify the Good Samaritan, please send WPBF 25 News reporter Ari Hait an email at ahait@hearst.com.
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