GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM Angela Cordeiro, 7, relaxed yesterday with her mom, Bonnie Cordeiro, on the porch of Bonnie's Pupukea home.

Girl, 7, recalls
horse ride to rescue
injured mother

Angela Cordeiro was forced
to ride back alone after her
mom was hurt in Pupukea

---

By Treena Shapiro
tshapiro@starbulletin.com

Bonnie Cordeiro worried that the trail might be a little slippery Saturday when she took her 7-year-old daughter Angela horseback riding in Pupukea. They made it two miles into the woods and were on their way back before they ran into trouble.

As the horses sensed they were heading home, they sped up and Angela's horse took the lead. Cordeiro had to bring her horse to a canter to catch up.

"We both pulled our horses up; my horse slid, lost his footing and landed on me," Cordeiro said. Then the horse ran away.

The horse crushed the ankle of the leg Cordeiro had just broken in November. "I was in excruciating pain," she said.

Angela had to control her horse, which also wanted to run, as well as her emotions.

"I said, 'Honey, don't cry, you have to be strong, you have to help me,'" Cordeiro said. "She pulled herself together and said, 'OK, Mom.'"

Angela said she could not help but cry as she rode back two miles by herself to find help.

"I felt sad. I was scared," she said.

The ride back was "really hard," especially when the horse had to go down hills. One hill was so steep, the horse "had to take little steps to get down it," she described.

As they passed other horses in a corral, it was hard to keep her horse on track, Angela said. "It was hard ... just to try to get her to go."

Eventually the horse got away from her when she had to get off to open a gate, but luckily by then it was a short walk to find help.

GEORGE F. LEE / GLEE@STARBULLETIN.COM Seven-year-old Angela Cordeiro played in a swing yesterday afternoon as her mom, Bonnie Cordeiro, relaxed on the porch of her Pupukea home. Angela, considered a hero by her parents, rode alone on horseback to fetch help for her mother after she fell from a horse as they rode on Saturday in the hills of Pupukea.

Her mother's friend lived in the nearest house. Her roommate was home and called the paramedics and the neighbor who could unlock the gates for the emergency vehicles.

Eventually, Cordeiro was driven out to a clearing and flown by helicopter to the hospital.

Cordeiro said that while she had been waiting, "I just prayed the whole time, 'Please let her be safe.'" Once she heard the ambulance sirens, she knew her daughter had made it.

"She's a good little rider and she's smart and she's strong and she's brave," Cordeiro said.

They were both relieved to be reunited.

"It felt better, and my mom was asking, 'Where is my daughter?' and she was trying to see me," Angela said.

Angela said that during the rescue, "everybody was saying, 'Thank you' and 'You're a good helper' and things like that."

Someone gave her a ball. Someone else gave her a jar of bubbles. The person who owns the horses gave her a present.

When she returned to her first-grade class at Sunset Beach Elementary School yesterday, she wrote about the experience in her journal and told her classmates about it during show and tell. "They were amazed," she said.

Cordeiro said she has told Angela that she was proud of her, but that is nothing new.

"When she was 2 years old, I told her she was going to be a hero someday."