A 13-year-old girl is being lauded for her courage after she steered a vehicle to safety when her mother became unresponsive at the wheel back in September.

“It seemed like my mind was going like a million miles an hour,” Abby Foss, the heroic teenager, said about those moments as she took the wheel.

The Hubbard County Sheriff’s Office said Foss called 911 just after 8:50 p.m. on Sept. 28 to report that her mother was “not responding to her and she was worried about getting her mother to slow down.”

Foss and her mother were reportedly on Highway 200 near Kabekona — a little more than 15 miles south of Bemidji — at the time of the call.

Foss then began to steer the vehicle and was able to get it to stop safely. After sending emergency responders, the dispatcher then gave the teen instructions on how to communicate with her mother and get the vehicle to slow down.

“[We] could have driven into a tree, could have driven into another car…scary,” Barb Foss, Abby’s mother, said.

“Just the whole community and everybody came together, it was wonderful,” she added. “It started with Abby.”

Barb says despite not being diabetic, doctors said her blood sugar level was very low, leading to the incident behind the wheel. Now feeling better, Barb says she’s watching her levels closely.  

The 911 dispatcher was Sydney Weniger — she, the Foss family, and a deputy who also helped met when Foss received an award for her courage and bravery from the Sheriff’s Office.

“She was able to tell me where they were at, how fast they were going, what was going on with her mom at the time, and still steer the vehicle, so it was it was amazing,” Weniger said about Foss.