Good Samaritan goes on quest to find woman he helped in Lake Co. crash

LAKE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - It happened in an instant, during a blinding Lake County rainstorm.

Mt. Dora Police say the driver of a white SUV lost control and crossed the median into oncoming traffic. The SUV slammed into an elderly woman's sedan, head-on before slamming to a stop in a ditch, along U.S. Highway 441 at E. Crooked Lake Drive.  What Rick Sarmiento saw shocked him.

"When you see something like that [and] you hear [the crash], your first reaction is 'Oh Dear Lord, please, please everyone be safe'" says Sarmiento.

Sarmiento says he jumped out of his car and ran to the SUV. Inside he found a young woman in her 20s. He says she kept blacking out. However, in one of her lucid moments she told him her name was "Ali."  

Sarmiento says, "She would come to again (and) she would look with this look in her eyes. Fear! Fear overcame her." 

He says he held 'Ali's' hand and prayed with her until paramedics came. When they took her away, he realized he had no way to find out if she would be ok. It kept him up all night.