When their SUV plunged off the side of a desolate California highway and landed 200 feet into a ravine, the little girl knew she had to do something to help her father who lay unconscious in the driver's seat of the overturned vehicle.

The girl, all of 9 years old, freed herself and crawled out of the window of wrecked Ford Escape.

She smelled gasoline and turned off the engine.

And then she started walking - in pitch black darkness, through steep and forbidding terrain.