MAHTOMEDI, Minn. — A Mahtomedi couple's decision to leave a trip early and take a different route home helped save a woman's life.
Mark and Deanna Hernandez left Hinckley early Wednesday night, driving back to Mahtomedi with Deanna's 10-year-old daughter and 12-year-old nephew in the back seat.
They were driving southbound on I-35 near Forest Lake when the truck in front of them hydroplaned, hit a barrier, then hit a snow bank, flipped and landed on its roof in two feet of standing water.
According to the Minnesota State Patrol, 22-year-old Allyson Andert of Centerville was driving.
"It was scary. I mean we watched it go airborne and everything. It was crazy," Deanna recalled. "Some car moved out of her way but just kept going."
The couple stopped right away.
"My first instinct was just to jump out the car and help. Just go," Mark said.
While Mark checked on Andert, Deanna stayed with the kids in the car and called 911.
Mark said the water was up to his knees and he couldn't see anyone in the truck. Another man pulled over and the two of them went back to the truck but couldn't get the doors open.
After a trooper showed up, the other Good Samaritan was able to cut Andert's seat belt. Mark said he and the other passerby pulled her out. A trooper gave her CPR and revived her.
While troopers searched the area to make sure there weren't any other victims, Mark stayed with Andert and held her head up.
"I just told her to be strong and I told her... I knew that she had a loving family at home, that it wasn't her time to go, and I thought she was a strong woman and she could make it through this," Mark recalled. "I told my wife when we first pulled her out, 'I thought about our daughter in there.' She's 20. I was like, 'Oh man, I wouldn't want to get that phone call.' You know?"
After Andert made it inside the ambulance, the couple drove home and later learned she would be fine.
They're thankful they were in the right place at the right time. Both said it was very dark and Andert's truck would've been hard to spot by cars passing by.
The couple said they wish more people would've stopped but Mark added, "If I had to do it again... I'd do it again... there's nothing I would change. I'd do the same thing."
According to Andert's mom, she had some bruising to her lungs but is now out of the hospital and doing fine.
Andert's mom said they hope to meet all the people who helped save her daughter's life.