If a parent weren’t around to help their child, we’d like to imagine a Good Samaritan might step in.

Thankfully that’s exactly what happened when 12-year-old Amy Martinez found herself in a dangerous situation.

When a woman tried to kidnap her, a stranger pretended to be her mom to save her.

Amy told KTLA that she was walking to her school, Lathrop Intermediate School, when a woman, believed to be homeless, named Claudia Hernandez Diaz approached her.

The woman has since been taken into custody as a suspect in the attempted kidnapping.

“She just came up to me and went like this,” Amy said, simulating a bear-hug.

“And then she started walking with me away.”

Amy was terrified and screamed for help.

“She told me in Spanish not to cry, but I wasn’t even crying,” Amy said.

Thankfully, someone heard Amy scream.

“I thought I wouldn’t see my mom or my dad again,” Amy told NBC Los Angeles. “She was saying that the demons are coming, Satan is here.”

A good Samaritan was driving her own child to school when she saw Amy in distress.

“Amy was kind of struggling to get away, so then those were the signs that something wasn’t right,” said a woman who did not want to be identified

At first, she wasn’t sure if Diaz was Amy’s mother, so the woman asked Amy if she was OK.

Amy confirmed that she was not alright.

“I’ll never forget the way she looked at me,” the woman said. “Her eyes were screaming for help.”

The woman yelled over to Diaz and said that Amy was her child and to take her hands off her.

She had to say it a few times before the woman finally let go.

“I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to live,'” Amy said.

The poor little girl must have been absolutely terrified!

Police said the woman’s quick thinking saved the child.

“She said she had, in her mind, had five seconds to come up with something to save this child,” Cpl. Anthony Bertagna of the Santa Ana Police Department said.

The woman took Amy and drove her to school, where her parents and the police were called.

“She’s our angel,” Amy’s aunt said about the Good Samaritan.

Police blanketed the area and arrested Diaz.

The good Samaritan is being hailed as a hero, but she says any parent would have done the same.

“When you’re a parent and you see somebody else’s child in danger you automatically react as if it was yours,” she said.

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By Jenny Brown

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Jenny Brown is a senior writer at Shareably. She is based in San Francisco and can be reached at [email protected].