GREENSBORO, N.C. — Amanda Smith's admirers say heroes don't all wear capes. Some have a blue safety vest.
If not for how high her delivery van sits from the road and a natural curiosity, the Greensboro Amazon driver would not have been able to see the peeking tire of an overturned car down a steep embankment.
And Shirley Roberts might not have been found in time.
"Something came over me that this is not normal," Smith recalled. "Something just didn't feel right."
The black Ford sedan had plunged off the highway and down a steep embankment last month near Asheboro, North Carolina. The car is thought to have been there for hours with the great-grandmother trapped inside after swerving to miss a dog. Later at a hospital, doctors would find a broken neck, ribs and femur.
This week, the retired lunch lady at a local school took 66 steps with a walker in rehab — a milestone, said her daughter-in-law, Eleanor Roberts.
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"Had it not been for Amanda," Roberts said.
Smith had been on a busy stretch of road, preparing to make a left turn when she glanced to her right. Her eye caught the tire, which in itself was not unusual. Sometimes they are tossed on the side of the road. But her vantage point up in the truck means she might see what others can't. And there was something about the way that tire poked up that led her to pull over. She put on her four-way flashers and got out. When she crossed the road and looked over the embankment, she saw a vehicle below a nestle of trees.
She had a sense of urgency as she called for help. Smith could see the car's taillights and hear a radio playing, but she couldn't get all the way down to the vehicle.
"Are you OK?" Smith called out.
But there was no response.
Her truck's hazard lights started drawing a crowd and one of the men in the forming group of onlookers was able to scale down the 20-foot drop to the overturned vehicle. He saw that the driver was alive and moving.
Arriving emergency workers used the Jaws of Life tool to wrest the doors from the car. A rescue team took it from there.
About 30 minutes later, Roberts was pulled out. Smith watched emergency responders load her onto a sled-like gurney and navigate her safely up the embankment.
"It was all pretty terrifying while it was unfolding, but I just couldn't leave until I found out she was going to be OK," Smith said.
Eleanor Roberts, the daughter-in-law, had been visiting West Virginia when a trooper from the Highway Patrol went through her mother-in-law's phone and found a name. While the officer shared that Shirley had been seriously injured and was at Moses Cone Hospital, Roberts did not tell her husband, Shirley's son, until they got back for fear they might have an accident trying to reach her. He just knew she had been involved in an accident and they needed to get back home.
"I prayed all the way back," Roberts said.
Smith stayed at the scene until the ambulance left.
And then she was back in her van, making the rest of her deliveries.
She wondered about the woman down the ditch.
"She reminds me a lot of my grandmother," Smith said.
The investigating trooper later called, asking if he could share her number with the family, which was eager to reach out and thank her. After having been through such trauma, Shirley Roberts doesn't want to talk about the accident, but there are plans for them to meet soon.
The daughter-in-law has been keeping Smith updated on Shirley's condition. She calls Smith an "asphalt angel."
Sometimes Smith serves as a dispatcher and might not even be out making deliveries.
But not that day.
"It was divine intervention," Eleanor Roberts said of Smith coming across her mother-in-law's car.
"I'm just thankful I was there that day," Smith said.
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