It’s okay if you don’t believe her. Nobody is asking you to believe. But Sandra believes.

It all started when Sandra was walking home from work. It was 1969. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” was still in theaters. We landed on the moon. The top-40 hits du jour belonged to the Stones and Neil Diamond.

The young woman had just gotten off work. She was on her way to the bus stop. It was icy, the sidewalk was a bit treacherous. She was in a hurry to get home; she wasn’t watching where she was walking..

Sandra misstepped. She fell. But her fall was in the deadliest direction possible. She fell off the curb, directly into the street of oncoming traffic.

She could see it all happening in slow motion. She tumbled into the roadway. The grill of an oncoming vehicle came flying up at her. She could hear the tires, up close and personal, crunching in the snow.

What she did not see, however, was the woman who saved her. At least, not at first. The woman appeared out of nowhere it seemed.

The woman was very tall. She was strong. Quite strong. And she was wearing overalls.

The stranger rescued her. The speeding vehicle missed Sandra by a few inches. And the woman moved her body to a safe place.

“San,” the strange woman said, using Sandra’s family nickname. “Can you hear me? I need you to keep your eyes open, sweetie.”

The woman kept using this name, until Sandra opened her eyes. Which she eventually did. Then—just like that—Miss Overalls seemingly disappeared.

Not a single witness saw the woman. Maybe Sandra imagined her. After all, this was a traumatic experience, who wouldn’t start seeing things? Moreover, as I say, this was 1969, who WASN’T hallucinating?

She sustained a broken femur. In her hospital bed, she was in agony. The pain meds made her loopy. But she kept reliving that scene. The oncoming car. The roaring engine. The fear. And, she kept re-feeling those strong hands. Female hands. Motherly hands. Lifting her out of harm’s way.

Speaking of mothers. Sandra’s own mother kept vigil beside her bed. They spent most of their days just sitting in her bedroom. This was an age before smartphones, when people actually talked to each other.

Her mother kept busy by writing Christmas cards, sitting near her daughter’s bed, with multiple boxes of stationery, and a shoebox of old photos nearby. The photos were copies of family snapshots, which her mother always sent to family members during the holidays. Black-and-white images of an antique era gone by.

Her mother was rifling through these images when Sandra stopped her.

In one photo, there was a woman in overalls who was tall and sturdily built. A farmer. She was standing with a group of children, before an old two-story farmhouse.

“Who is that woman in the picture?” asked Sandra.

“That’s your great-grandmother,” said her mom. “She was a tough person, a single mother, after her husband died of scarlet fever. Managed the farm all by herself. I named you after her. Everyone called her ‘San.’”