Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
94-year-old looks for hero who pulled her from sinking car
Boca resident drove into waist-deep water off Glades Road
Alice Modine is looking for the “guardian angel” who pulled her from her sinking car and then disappeared.
The 94-year-old Boca Raton resident was driving home, eastbound on Glades Road about 2:30 Saturday afternoon, when a storm hit.
The rain came down so hard she could not see through her windshield, so Modine decided to pull over just east of Florida’s Turnpike.
The next thing she knew she was up to her waist in water in a lake near the Hilton Boca Raton Suites hotel.
“Until I parked my car, I didn’t realize I was submerged in water,” she said. “And I thought, Wow!”
She wasn’t aware she had jumped a curb, squeezed past a guardrail and rolled about 20 to 30 feet across the grass into the water.
Try as she might, Modine couldn’t open the car doors or windows.
“I thought of Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick,”
she said, referring to the 1969 crash that killed a young woman when the senator drove off a Massachussetts bridge.
“I didn’t panic,” Modine said. “I just kind of faced reality.”
That’s when a young man appeared, opened the door to her 2007 Toyota Corolla, and told her to hold on as he led her out of the water, she said.
As her car sank, he stripped off some clothes and jumped back into the water to retrieve her purse and important papers from the Toyota.
“He just dove right into this murky, cold water and it was raining and it was cold,” she said.
By then, other people had gathered around and police and fire rescue had arrived to take her to the hospital.
Modine lost her angel in the crowd and commotion. She wants to find him and thank him.
“He risked his own life to save mine,” she said. “And, he doesn’t even know me.”
She thinks he had some rescue training because he kept calm and knew what to do.
“He did it like he had saved people’s lives before,” she said.
Modine had no physical injuries and a police officer gave her a ride home from the hospital.
“There are some people who never have any luck but I always have good luck,” she said.
That luck ran out a little on Wednesday when Modine and her nephew visited what remains of her car at the Boca Raton Towing and Recovery yard. Nothing could be saved.
At 94, she said her family is urging her to stop driving and take Uber, but she says it would interfere with her daily routine that includes ballet and yoga classes.