Shiloh Corbet, a sheriff’s dispatcher, was driving home from work when she spotted a boy who had just been reported missing running near the state Route 52 on-ramp and onto the Santee highway.
She called the sighting in to her colleagues, stopped her car and followed.
By the time she got to the highway’s shoulder, the child had crossed the westbound lanes and was standing in the center divider. Calling out the boy by name, she continued to follow him until deputies arrived.
Corbet and those two deputies, Cody Green and Michael Moser, were honored last week by the Sheriff’s Office for their roles in the harrowing rescue of the 11-year-old boy with autism.
The March 9 incident began around 4:30 p.m. when the boy’s family reported that the child, who is non-verbal, had run out of a supermarket on Mission Gorge Road near Cuyamaca Street and gone missing, sheriff’s officials said.
A sheriff’s helicopter was sent up, and deputies were dispatched to locate him.
Corbet was driving home around 5:15 p.m. when she spotted him. By the time Green and Moser approached the boy, he was sitting down in the center divider.
But as they walk up a small embankment toward him, the boy stood up and hopped over a wall onto the right shoulder of the highway, according to video captured by the sheriff’s helicopter overhead.
“He’s actually running and jumping onto the highway lanes,” the helicopter pilot is heard saying in the video.
Another deputy on the radio asked for the highway to be shut down.
The boy then ran down the left shoulder as cars and trucks raced by, the drivers not realizing what was occurring, the video showed.
However, within seconds, the two deputies — within a few feet of the ing cars — caught up to the boy, wrapped their arms around him and walked him back to safety.
The deputies were able to get the boy back over the guardrail and reunite him with his family. No injuries were reported.
The three rescuers were honored with Exemplary Performance Awards for their efforts.
