CHUBBUCK — Cassia Myers believes she saw three real-life “superheroes” in action late Tuesday morning when her quick trip home ended up involving her in a desperate rescue that boosted both her faith in humanity and God.

The incident began to unfold around 11:20 a.m. when a female driver was reportedly run off Hawthorne Road by a black pickup truck. The local woman’s sedan careened into the canal along the road and quickly began filling with water as it was swept away by the strong current.

Fortunately, the superheroes Myers mentioned — Mason Bates, Nate Lee and an unidentified third individual — jumped into the canal’s frigid waters and kept the incident from ending in tragedy, rescuing the 62-year-old woman from her sinking automobile.

In looking back on how the rescue played out, Myers, Bates and Lee all feel that divine intervention played a role in everything — from Myers spotting the car in the canal to Bates being the first one to jump in to help the woman to Lee having a two-foot wrench in his vehicle that he used to smash out the car’s driver’s side window so the woman could be pulled from the vehicle.

Even the paramedics showing up at precisely the right time to help the rescuers lift the woman onto the canal bank seemed like more than a coincidence to those who were there.

The entire rescue only took four to six minutes but Myers and the others said everyone’s involvement during that time was like a piece of a puzzle that fit perfectly so that in the end the woman trapped in her car was able to be saved.

“We all worked together,” said Myers of Chubbuck. “It was like an assembly line and everyone knew what to do. Everyone knew they had a job and everyone did it.”

The first piece of the puzzle was Myers, the manager of Nouveau Medspa and Salon in Chubbuck, who at the last minute decided to drive home to get her cellphone charger after running some errands.

She was pulling into her driveway on Homestead Road when she randomly glanced over to the canal on the other side of nearby Hawthorne Road and saw the woman’s car floating down the waterway. When Myers caught a glimpse of the woman in the vehicle’s driver’s seat she immediately exited her vehicle and ran toward the canal.

The swift current was carrying the woman’s car down the canal at a fast pace and Myers had to run alongside the waterway to keep up.

Myers called 911 from the canal bank and was soon joined by the first of the superheroes, a man wearing a white shirt whose name is still a mystery.

Both ran along the canal, looking for a spot where they could enter the waterway and get to the woman whose car was quickly spinning in the current and filling with water.

Then out of nowhere Bates arrived and “cannonballed into the water,” Myers said.

“Without hesitation he went right in and swam up to her car,” Myers added.

Bates, a 16-year-old Highland High School student from Chubbuck, had been on his way back from Planet Fitness with his girlfriend when he saw Myers, the man in the white shirt and the car in the canal and knew something was wrong.

Bates said he did think for a split second before jumping into the fast-moving canal water that he was putting his own safety at risk.

“But I realized that I didn’t have time to think about if I would be in danger, so I jumped in and put myself aside,” Bates said. “I wanted to make sure the woman in the car was safe over my own safety.”

Bates immediately realized this rescue wouldn’t be easy when he was greeted by not only the frigid canal water but the woman’s Hyundai Elantra spinning round and round wildly in the current.

Somehow, Bates was able to get to a spot in the canal where he could dig in his feet, keep his own head above water and stop the car from flowing with the current.

“I had to use quite a bit of force to stop the car,” Bates said. “Adrenaline definitely helped.”

The man in the white shirt then entered the canal and he and Bates tried to open the car’s doors to get to the woman inside who at this point was frozen in shock as the ice-cold water filled her vehicle.

Myers directed their efforts from the canal bank, knowing that the situation was dire.

“The water was coming up inside the car, the woman was in shock and the situation became really scary really fast,” Myers said.

Bates and the man in the white shirt couldn’t open the car’s doors and needed to find something they could use to break the vehicle’s windows so they could get to the woman. Myers began looking along the canal bank for a large rock to shatter the glass.

That was when the third superhero arrived on the scene.

Lee, an HVAC service technician for the Blackfoot-based Harris Co., was driving along Hawthorne Road in his work truck heading to his next job when he spotted the woman’s car in the water and the rescuers struggling to save her.

“They told me they needed something to break the window so I went to my truck and grabbed the biggest pipe wrench I had,” said Lee of Pocatello.

He got in the water and handed the 24-inch wrench to Bates and the man in the white shirt, who used it to break out the car’s passenger side window.

But the woman was shaking and completely in shock at this point and wouldn’t move from the driver’s seat.

“So they handed me the wrench and told me to break out the driver’s side window,” Lee said.

Lee said he told the woman to “look away and close her eyes” for her own safety before he used the wrench to smash the window. But the woman was completely unresponsive.

After shattering the window, Lee tried to pull the woman out of the vehicle but realized she was wearing her seat belt, so he quickly used the work knife he was carrying to cut her loose.

“I tried pulling her through the window but she couldn’t even grab onto me she was shaking so bad,” Lee said. “It was a scary moment.”

But Lee kept trying to pull the woman from the car and eventually was able to remove her.

Bates and the man in the white shirt came around to the driver’s side of the car and helped Lee move the woman toward the canal bank, where Chubbuck Fire Department paramedics had just arrived and helped pull the woman from the water.

“It was right when they got her to near the canal bank that the paramedics pulled up,” Myers said. “Nate pulled her out of the car, handed her to Mason who then handed her to the gentleman in the white shirt and then to the paramedics.”

Lee then noticed the cuts and blood from the shattered car window glass on his hand, wrist and forearm.

The paramedics treated him at the scene and he later went to a local urgent care for additional medical attention.

Lee was the only person injured during the incident. The woman in the car, though terribly shaken up, did not suffer any injuries thanks to her timely rescue. She was examined by paramedics at the scene and driven home by a Chubbuck police officer. Her name hasn’t been released.

Police are still searching for the black pickup truck that reportedly ran her off the road. Anyone with information should contact the Chubbuck Police Department at 208-237-7172.

In looking back on the rescue that she witnessed, Myers said she can’t help but feel better about humanity.

“There are still good people in this world,” Myers said. “The biggest thing I took out of this were the Good Samaritans — how brave those guys were. They didn’t hesitate. They just dove in. It made me feel just really good about people.”

The more Lee thinks about the incident, the more he feels how fortunate they all were because it could have easily ended in tragedy.

“It could have gone worse in so many ways,” Lee said. “Her car could have shifted and pinned us all under it.”

Myers agrees.

“I think it could have ended in tragedy,” she said. “Her car kept filling up. She was panicking. Another 10 to 15 seconds later and she could have drowned.”

The rescuers agreed that a higher power guided them. Lee called it “God’s hand” while Myers said it was “for sure divine intervention.”

Myers described the actions of the rescuers as a “superhero moment.”

Bates and Lee said they just did what had to be done to rescue a woman trapped in her car.

“I just wanted to do the right thing,” Bates said. “I’m glad I could help her.”

Lee added, “I just saw that they needed help and didn’t even think about it. I don’t feel like a superhero by any means. I was just doing what needed to be done. We were at the right place at the right time.”