Connie Snipes didn't have time to think. In an instant, she saw two problems: a smashed-up car rolling toward traffic and its driver lying unconscious inside.

        She acted. It's as simple and as complicated as that.

        “Connie did not know me from Adam, yet she took the risk to save me,” said the grateful driver, Jayne Elslager of Anderson Township. “She had her 8-year-old and twins in her van at the time. In today's society it is hard to believe someone would do that.”

        She's right. Heroic acts are so surprising that biologists are still pondering the question. What motivates humans to place the safety of others above their own?

        Even Ms. Snipes, 35-year-old mother of four, can't explain it.

        “I was shaking by the time the police and ambulance arrived, because of the adrenaline rush ... and the thought of me doing that,” the Covington woman said.

        What she did was try to stop a moving car.

        The accident happened at 7:20 p.m. Saturday near the Florence Mall.

        Ms. Elslager, headed south on Mall Road, was stopped at a red light at Heights Boulevard. Without warning, her car was rammed from behind by a Ford pickup. Its driver, from the state of California, had been searching for a restaurant and didn't see the other car, he told police.

        The force of the collision slammed Ms. Elslager into her steering wheel. When she fell back, the seat broke so that she was lying down. She doesn't remember much about those minutes, she says.

        Ms. Snipes was three cars behind the Ford at the intersection. At first, she didn't realize what had happened: It was dark, and Ms. Elslager's Honda Prelude had skidded through the intersection and onto some grass.

        As Ms. Snipes drove forward, she saw Ms. Elslager lying in the car. It was slowly rolling down an incline and turning back toward the road. Traffic rushed past, oblivious to the approaching hazard.

        Ms. Snipes parked her van and ran to the other car. She managed to open the door but couldn't do much while running alongside.

        So she jumped in. With knees planted on the metal between the door and driver's seat, she turned the steering wheel without effect. Just as she was pulling the emergency brake, the car bumped into the back of her van.

        Ms. Elslager was taken to the hospital and released with minor injuries. The driver of the Ford was not charged because police didn't see the accident, but their reports back up the witnesses' accounts.

        “This woman is responsible for my being alive today,” Ms. Elslager told me. “I feel the communi ty should know people like her do exist.”

        Indeed they do — to the confusion of science.

        Following Darwin, biologists have proposed “reciprocal altruism” as one explanation: Heroes act with the expectation of payback.

        Then there's the theory of “kin selection,” in which relatives sacrifice themselves to perpetuate kindred genes.

        But none of this explains Connie Snipes.

        Perhaps there is something else inside many of us — a basic humanity that leaps forward when the mind stalls.

        Thank God. There are some mysteries science will never solve.

       Karen Samples is Kentucky columnist for the Enquirer. She can be reached at 859-578-5584 or ksamples@enquirer.com.

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