SALEM, Ore. – A woman hit by a car, tossed from a 30-foot bridge, swept down a fast-moving creek lived because of a police officer who jumped into the creek to rescue her.

Janice Johnson, 48 and a transient, was hit by 73-year-old Barbara Witt on the Mission Street Bridge and was thrown into Mill Creek.

Witt said she knew she’d hit something and it had gone over the bridge, but she did not know that it was a person until witnesses told her what had happened.

“I was sick,” Witt said after hitting Johnson. “I wanted to go down, but I was too crippled-up to even climb over the thing.”

While Witt anxiously waited by the side of the road with her damaged car, responding Officer Oscar Zambrano went looking in the creek.

“When I got to the north side of the bridge I saw what appeared to be hair,” said Zambrano.

Floating with only her face above water was Johnson. She was caught on a tree branch in the swift water.

Zambrano jumped into the creek that was waist deep and grabbed her. He held onto to her until paramedics arrived.

“I think any police officer would do the same thing,” he said. “I have no doubt. It’s just one of those things we’re entrusted to do. Help people. I knew that every second, if I was to hesitate, would be the difference between life and death. So I ran in there as quick as possible.”

Witt called the officer’s actions heroic.

“I’m glad that he could get her out,” she said. “I was so afraid she was dead. I didn’t know what was happening.”

When Johnson was pulled from the water her skin was blue but she was alive.

“Good Lord was on her side,” said Witt. “That’s for sure. And thank God he was on mine too, because I never would’ve been able to live with myself if I’d killed somebody.”

After the incident Zambrano refused to go back to the police station and change out of his wet uniform until he’d gotten statements from all of the witnesses even after his boss told him to do so.

Johnson remains in critical condition and Witt has not been charged with anything.