On an August afternoon last year, Pamela Rivers, 40, and her friend Rita Graham, 38, were stopped at a red light on Cobb's Creek Parkway in South Philadelphia when a white SUV traveling in the opposite direction turned across traffic in front of them. It then jumped the curb   and rushed through a grassy expanse   before plunging down an embankment   toward Cobb's Creek. Pamela quickly pulled over, jumped out of her car, and dialed 911. Kenny Gibson, 23, and his friend Taron Green, 25, were driving home from a job when Rita flagged them down. Kenny stopped, and the men got out of the car and looked over the cliff. The SUV had landed upside down in five feet of water. A woman's leg could be seen swinging out the driver's side window. "I have a fear of water," Kenny said now. "I almost drowned when I was nine." Even so, he and Taron hurried down the 50-foot embankment into the muddy water. "I couldn't just leave her," he adds. The men waded out to the car and saw that the woman, Cheryl Allison, 61, was partially in water. Kenny tried unsuccessfully to open the door. Then he broke the window. But when he reached in to pull out Cheryl, he found she was trapped by the seat belt. "Run back to the truck and grab a box cutter ," Kenny yelled to Taron. Meanwhile, Kenny tried in vain to push the car onto its side to create an air pocket for Cheryl. That's when mechanic Marcell Porter approached the site. "I flipped into rescue mode," he said. When Taron returned, Kenny cut through the seat belt with the box cutter. He and Marcell tried to pull Cheryl out, but she wouldn't come out. Marcell broke the rear window with a rock, hoping to rescue her from the back. Then he saw that she was still strapped in by her shoulder belt. Marcell reached for the box cutter and cut the remaining strap in two. Kenny leaned in, grabbed Cheryl by the waist, and pulled her out feet first. Marcell grasped Cheryl's legs, and they managed to drag her lifeless body onto a rock. "Give her CPR!" Pamela yelled down to them. But the two men had no idea what to do. "Put your mouth on her mouth and breathe," she shouted to Marcell. And to Kenny, "Pump her chest!" "We tried three times," said Marcell. Finally, Cheryl brought up water and started moving her fingers. The men rolled her over onto her stomach to let out more water. Soon an ambulance arrived and transported Cheryl to the hospital, where doctors treated her. They never discovered what caused her to pass out, but she assumes it had something to do with the burning summer heat. Over the next few days, they took turns visiting Cheryl in the hospital, where they shared hugs and tears. "We couldn't believe she was all right," said Pamela. "It's just amazing that these people came together," said Cheryl. She stays in touch with her "angels" via frequent phone calls. "They are really beautiful people," she said. Kenny is afraid of water because   _  .
he can't swim The water was too deep the water was too muddy once he narrowly missed drowning