NAPLES, Fla. — Early Tuesday morning, as people were heading to the polls, a campaign volunteer saw a car stuck in a pond and a woman hanging out of her drivers window.
"You know the adrenaline kicks in," says Jackie Ardoline, who saw the woman in distress and stepped in to help. "So I was like just do it. This is an emergency. I know what to do."
Ardoline says she came through the side entrance of Covenant Church of Naples to start campaigning when she saw the woman's tail lights backing up into the pond.
So she called 9-1-1.
"I noticed the water was creeping up really quickly and so then I said, can you get out the window," says Ardoline.
In this photo, you can see the open window as the car sank.
Ardoline tells FOX 4 that it took two tow trucks to pull the car out of the pond.
She continues to describe the moment she had to jump in to assist this woman, who she says was in her early 80s.
The water was up to maybe almost her chest, and she was slipping because there was mud," says Ardoline. "It was all muck in the bottom, so once she did the hard work of getting out the window, I was able to kind of shimmy up behind her and just like yank her up the shore."
Once she was out of the water and safe, Ardoline says the woman was in shock.
That's when she learned that the woman was on her way to work the polls.
So, FOX 4 contacted Trish Robertson, the public relations officer for the Collier County Supervisor of Election, to find out how the woman was doing.
"From the family, she's doing a lot better," says Robertson. "She's receiving treatment, and she's onto recovery."
Ardoline says it was a miracle that she saw the woman because no one heard her screams for help.
Other campaigners who say they were there at the time did not know there was a crisis until first responders showed up.
The woman is with her son.
