Sandra Ferguson, an elementary school teacher's aide from California, thwarted an attempt by a strange man to kidnap an 11-year old student on Friday after she saw the girl in public and sensed that something was amiss, the New York Daily News reported.
Ferguson recalled that she noticed a young girl seated at the front of a car with a strange man that morning. Recognizing the girl as one of the students from the school where she works, she drove up to the car and began a conversation with them.
"I said, 'Sweetheart, is that your dad?' She said, 'No, he's a friend.' I said, 'No, he's not your friend!'" Ferguson told KGO.
The teacher's aid then blocked the man's car using hers, told the girl to leave the car then called the authorities.
"It was kind of like a superwoman power thing. It was like, wow, I can't believe I did that," she said.
Santiago Salazer, 51, the so-called friend of the student, was arrested moments later without incident and charged with suspicion of kidnapping.
Police said that Salazer had lured the student into his car, grabbed her by the wrist and pushed her inside, according to the Contra Costa Times.
Ferguson works as a teacher's aide in Sutter Elementary School in Antioch, Calif. She has garnered praise from the teacher for saving the student, saying that Sandra is "a guardian angel, preventing something terrible from happening."
