Sue Teders loves her animals. Sue is in her 70s and lost her husband several years ago from leukemia. “When you're home by yourself...you know, a dog is unconditional love. They're there when you get up in the morning. They're there when you come home. They're there when you go to bed.”

Teders had one dog in particular she took with her everywhere — Claire — named after Claire Beauchamp, a character in Teders’ favorite TV series, Outlander.

On July 28, 2022, Teders and Claire were on Superstition Boulevard in Apache Junction when her car became stuck in the mud by a wash. At first, she thought nothing of it. But suddenly, a large gush of water swept over the roadway and carried her car into the wash, where it began traveling southbound, hitting branches as it went.

“I thought, oh my God, now I'm in trouble,” Teders remembers. As her car finally came to a stop by an overpass, Dupont and other first responders were able to reach her vehicle. Dupont broke the back and passenger windows of the car to get a look inside the vehicle. As he looked, he found Teders inside, trapped.

“Everything was just developing so rapidly,” says Dupont. “And I could see that the water was coming over the vehicle now and was starting to come inside the cabin area. It just kind of escalated from there.”

“They start yelling at me to get out of the car,” recalls Teders. “But I'm 70 years old...they broke the passenger window and they're saying, 'get out of the car,' and so now I'm pushing myself back, trying to get my feet over the console. And all that time I am yelling about my dog, you know, 'where, where's my dog?'

Teders was able to move far enough for Dupont and his team to grab her and safely remove her from the car. Sadly, Claire was never recovered.

After Teders was safely rescued from her car, Dupont realized in his efforts to save her, he cut his hands breaking the car’s windows. He needed stitches in his hands and took time off work to let them heal and regain his grip strength. But once he recovered, one of the first places Dupont visited was the scene of the incident on the July morning.

Walking the now-dry wash, it strikes him how dangerous the situation he and his colleagues were in. Teders’ car had traveled a mile and a half in the currents before it came to a temporary stop.

“I mean, it's five, six feet of drainage tubes that run underneath the roadway there, and every single one was full,” Dupont says. For Dupont, this realization underscores how fortunate he and his team were to be in the right place at the right time that day. “If someone didn't call, we would have never known that [she] was there.”

“When we're responding to a fatal collision, one of the duties is to notify next of kin of... of a tragedy that had occurred. And those aren't always the easiest to do. And that was something that I just, you know, did not want to do that day. If we weren't able to get her out of the vehicle as fast as we could, it... it definitely could have been a different story.”

For Teders, the experience underscored how important public safety professionals are to community safety. “We don't realize how much appreciation we should really have for (police),” she admits. “If they had not come and been there, I would not be here today to talk to you.”

As for Claire, Teders said she spent the immediate days following the accident mourning the loss of her companion. But then received an unexpected show of support from her family. “My family did a fun fundraiser for me for a new dog.”

Her new dog is named Brianna, after another character in Outlander. In her own words, Teders says Brianna is “the light of my life. I take her everywhere. She's that support that I needed.” She feels both Claire and Brianna came into her life for a reason and is grateful to the Apache Police and Fire Departments for ensuring she was able to continue living her life and experiencing moments of joy with her dogs and family.

“I learned...how appreciative I was of life.” Teders wants first responders to “know that they are appreciated and that they are important, 'cause that's what needs to be told.” Thanks to their bravery, and the bravery of officers like Josh Dupont, Sue Teders and Brianna are able to continue experiencing life together.