BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. – Laurie Rabyor says she knows she’s lucky to be alive and can’t thank her co-workers and bystanders enough for saving her life.
On Friday, she met the people she calls her heroes.
A few of Rabyor’s co-workers and she were driving home from work in separate cars at the same time.
Her friend and co-worker, Jannette Rivera, said another co-worker pointed out that Rabyor was slumped over the steering wheel of her car.
She was obviously in the midst of a medical emergency. That’s when witnesses saw that the car was rolling into a busy intersection at Woolbright Road and Congress Avenue in the city of Boynton Beach.
Rivera ran to help her friend and flagged down bystanders who were watching everything unfold.
“My other co-worker was like ‘Jannette, something is wrong with her.’ So I put my car in park and I just started running, waving asking for help, to stop the cars,” Rivera said.
Staff Sgt. Juan Chavez saw the commotion and was one of the people who jumped in front of Rabyor’s car to stop it.
“It took about 4 or 5 of us to stop the car. We literally just jumped in front of it and pushed as hard as we could,” Chavez recalled.
One man can be seen in the video trying to shatter the glass with his fist.
Another motorist had a dumbbell in his car and went and retrieved it.
David Formica said he grabbed the weight and broke the glass.
“I play tennis and golf and used a backswing. It broke the glass,” he said.
Several people were able to put the car in neutral once it was stopped. Robin Fox, a registered nurse, moved in and checked Rabyor’s vital signs and spoke with a 911 dispatcher over the phone.
They all said not a single one of them could have done it alone and for Rabyor, she couldn’t say enough about her “heroes.”
“There are good people out there that will put themselves ahead of you to make sure that you are OK. It’s nice to know there are people out there who care, who actually care,” she said, adding “to have my co-worker running through traffic like that, no regards for her life . . .”