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By Lulu Ramadan

(myPalmBeachPost) – Jennifer Green shut her eyes and cried out for help as murky water slowly poured through the shattered window of her car.

She couldn’t swim, her leg was caught under the seat and there appeared to be no way out of what seemed like a bottomless canal along Florida’s Turnpike near Boca Raton.

“I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see the water flowing in, flowing in, flowing in,” Green, 64, recalled from the horrific Dec. 1 incident. “I prayed. There was nothing to do but pray.”

Green suddenly felt someone tugging her body through the wreck. Paula Ursini, an off-duty firefighter from Wellington, heard Green’s cries and spotted the car sinking while she was driving to work at Boca Raton Fire Rescue.

Instincts kicked in. Ursini pulled off her boots, threw her purse aside and swam toward Green’s cries.

“I had no idea how deep it was until I jumped in and couldn’t feel the bottom,” Ursini said.

After pulling Green from the canal near Glades Road, Ursini clutched Green on the embankment and watched the car fully submerge into the water.

Green cried into Ursini’s shoulder — “My hero,” she said.

Green doesn’t remember how her car ended up in the canal — only the crash, breaking the driver’s side window and shouting for help.

Since the rescue, Ursini has been touted as a savior by her fire department and Green’s family. Green says she’s eternally grateful for Ursini.

But Ursini says Green saved her life too.

Amid a divorce, Ursini, a mother of two boys, was questioning her career as a firefighter and whether she should stay in Wellington, thousands of miles from her family in Canada.

“I was feeling lost,” she said. “I was asking God for a sign that everything was going to be OK.”

Ursini later learned that the woman she pulled from the canal was a nurse, a foster mother who adopted a child with physical disabilities and a grandmother to a newborn 1-week-old at the time.

“The fact that I could save someone who saved so many other people throughout her life is just incredible to me,” Ursini said. “It’s like we were kindred spirits.”

Ursini’s training taught her to wait for back-up during rescues, but in this case, she knew time was critical.

“I’ve always been that type of person that stops and helps. I just never thought of putting myself in danger,” Ursini said. “I just saw this woman and knew she was going to die if I didn’t do something.”

Ursini had trouble pulling Green to land during the rescue. Green was panicking and flailing in the water, so Ursini shouted for help. A bearded man in all white clothing jumped into the water and helped pull the women to shore, she recalled.

When they got to the embankment, he disappeared, she said.

Green heard the man’s voice and felt him pull her to shore, but never caught a glimpse of him, she said.

“I think he was an angel,” Green said.

Ursini hopes to track the man down and thank him. She spent weeks after the rescue looking for Green. “I just needed to hug her,” she said. “I just needed to know she was alright.”

They spoke on the phone and learned more about each other following the incident.

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