Wednesday, August 15th 2012, 9:02 pm
Imagine losing control of your car, driving into a ditch, and it catching on fire, only to be saved by four complete strangers.
That's what happened to a Spavinaw woman this weekend, right in front of her home.
Lavon Sharp was doing what she always does this past Sunday morning at 4 a.m.: leaving her rural Mayes County home and heading to work in Vinita.
Only, one of her daughter's horses had gotten past the fence, and Lavon had to wrangle it back to safety, making her late. Then it was back in her car in the still pitch black morning hours.
"So I up and started to work and I don't know, I got in the car and I put it in reverse and that was it. And these kids, my angels, came by," Sharp said.
Those angels came in the form of 17-year-old Kalee Macon, 16-year-old Brue Tibbets, 17-year-old Lakyn Crook, and 18-year-old Austin Cooper.
"If it wasn't for my car messing up, we wouldn't have never came by," Cooper said.
The four had been in Jay at Cruise Night.
Cooper's car had broken down, and they were towing it home when they came across Lavon's car sticking out of the ditch.
"Her headlights were just straight up," Tibbets said.
"It was kind of nerve-wracking, because we were like, 'Oh my God, what do we do?'" Macon added.
They said they were freaking out, but they kept calm enough to take the necessary steps to save her.
"Make sure she was okay, and at least help her out if anybody was in there," Cooper said.
It's important to understand, this road is southwest of Spavinaw, about as rural as Mayes County can get. It has no streetlights and hardly any traffic, especially at 4 a.m. on a Sunday.
So you can imagine Sharp's surprise when Tibbets began pounding on her window.
"And I looked up and I thought, 'I didn't see anybody come up,'" Sharp said.
Brue pulled Sharp out of her car and that's when everyone saw the fire.
"It was scary," Macon said.
The fire destroyed Lavon's car and she quickly called 911 before it spread into the brush.
"We're on the road and the whole damn hillside is going to go if we don't get somebody here quick," Sharp said to the 911 dispatcher.
Both Sharp and the teens said it was an experience they'll never forget.
"You always hear the saying, to always cherish your life while it's here, you never know when you're going to go, but you really don't. I don't think you really understand that until you go through something like this or have to see something like that," Crook said.
Sharp said she remains in good spirits. She only suffered some minor nerve damage to her back.
But she said it would have been much, much worse without a daring rescue from her angels.
"They saved my life and I'll say that until the day I die. They saved my life. I keep saying, too, that God just wasn't ready for me yet," Sharp said.
Sharp has talked with the teens over the phone, but she hasn't met them in person since the accident.
She said she hopes to be able to do that very soon.
August 15th, 2012
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