Wrong Number Leads to Saved Life

It was the most fortunate wrong number Annie Turner ever dialed - and the most surprising call Taylor Booker ever got.

Now, Booker's being lauded as a hero.

Turner, 70, of Richmond, in Northern California, suffered a stroke Feb. 20, and tried to phone a friend for help. But she dialed a random number, and got Booker, a biochemistry major at the University of California - Riverside, almost 500 miles away in the southern part of the state, who was in a friend's dorm room.

"I really didn't realize the seriousness of the call," Booker, 18, told "Early Show Saturday Edition" co-anchor Chris Wragge. "I honestly thought it was a prank call. It was a late Friday night, early Saturday morning. And that was the farthest thing from my mind, that something like this would happen. So when I realized that it was a serious call, it was a big deal."

Booker says she grasped the seriousness of the situation "and that it wasn't a joke at all" when Turner told her she had fallen and needed help.

She noted Turner's 510 area code on her caller ID, and ran off the names of several towns in that area code until Turner stopped her at Richmond, as a way of communicating to Booker that that's where Turner lived.

Booker used a friend's cell phone to call 911 in Riverside, who transferred her to police in Richmond. As Booker and the friend spoke to police, Booker kept Turner on the line, getting as much information from her as she could, even though Turner was having trouble speaking.

The Richmond 911 operator who took the call, Deana Norton, told Wragge she got Turner's number form Booker's caller ID, then used reverse 911, which shows addresses calls come from, to determine Turner's location, and dispatched officers.

Turner is home from the hospital.

Booker, who hails from Hercules, Calif., not far from Richmond, went to meet Turner while home on Spring Break.

"It was a very nice visit," Booker told Wragge. "It was wonderful. She is a very sweet lady. She has her Bachelor's in science, the same thing I'm working for. And it was just an inspiration. She was very grateful and thankful when I went to visit her."

Booker told CBS News, "After hanging up (from the call from Booker), I had a moment of silence. I was in shock. Through this, I was thinking of my own grandmother, who had also fallen a few times … so this really hit me, and I could imagine how she must have needed help and didn't have any."

Her hometown city council honored her this week.