Cheeka of Gloucester, Maine, was not your average yapping chihuahua. She was an unusually quiet little three-year-old which Ed McCallum had gotten from a rescue shelter two and a half years earlier.

Late on a Wednesday evening, after bed-time in April of 2010, Cheeka began barking insistantly rapidly and licking Ed's face. As near as Ed could tell, there was no reason for it, so he said, "C'mon, Cheeks, let's go back to sleep." But she would not relent, so Ed got out of bed and looked from his second-story bedroom window, but could see nothing untoward. Cheeka sttill wouldn't give up. She ran downstairs still barking dramatically, though she'd never before gone downstairs alone after bedtime.

So Ed got some clothes on and went outside to have a look. He saw on the far edge of his property what looked like an old white refrigerator dumped off the side of the road. But It was a white mini-van flipped completely over. And stuck inside was Mary Orlando, bloody and dangling upside down, on what was her 55th birthday no less.

Firefighters and paramedics were called to the scene and soon had Mary freed, and off to a hospital, where she found to be in pretty good condition considering what she'd gone through. Of Cheeka, Ed McCallum said, "She's a hero. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have seen it until I went to work the next morning."