`Oh my God, you're Allen Iverson.'

The college student was driving on Interstate 64 from Newport News to Hampton. It was after midnight, and Eileen Mellon was reaching toward the cup slot to her right, where she had tucked away her cell phone. She was pulling onto an exit ramp. She saw heavy construction cones and swerved. Her friend in the passenger seat screamed. The car flipped three times and landed on its side.And that was how, roughly six weeks ago, Mellon and Ashlee Skweres met Allen Iverson.``I turned the car off,'' recalled Mellon, who attends Roanoke College; Skweres attends Old Dominion University. ``I just figured I should do that. We were fine. And then there was someone knocking on the window, asking if we were all right. He told us to roll down the window. I had to turn the car back on. He pulled Ashlee out. I looked up and said, `Oh my God, you're Allen Iverson.' He got us out.


``By then, an ambulance came. They checked us and suggested we go to the hospital. Ashlee went. I waited for my mom.''It was all so fast, so surreal. It was enough for a friend, April Snoparsky, who has Philadelphia roots, to write a letter to the Philadelphia Daily News. She's an Iverson fan. All three girls are. Snoparsky wanted people to know about Iverson's rescue effort, that there was more than controversy to the former 76ers star.Iverson, who grew up in Hampton, said he was with some friends on I-64 ``on our way to see my uncle's house.''``I feel good that they're appreciative,'' Iverson said in a telephone conversation during a break in the Denver Nuggets' training camp. ``I look at it as just being a human being. They needed help. People have helped me.''Iverson said he hadn't thought about the situation ``in a while.''He said he had been unaware that it had become public knowledge until he was informed by his personal manager, Gary Moore. He hadn't seen Snoparsky's letter until Tuesday.``I just saw the car on the left side of the road,'' he told the Rocky Mountain News this week. ``It was crashed all up. You could see all the glass and stuff in the street from the wreck. The car was smoking. I was like, `We've got to go see what's up with these people.'``Both of them said they were all right. One of them (Mellon), her seat belt was still on. I remember looking in there and asking, `Are you sure you're all right? Is anything broken or anything like that?' One of them looked up and said, `Oh my God, are you Allen Iverson?' I was like, `Yeah, but don't worry about that. We're trying to get you all out and make sure you're all right.'''Pulled to safety, Iverson saw the girls suddenly realize the severity of the moment.``When they got out of the car and looked at (it), that's when both of them lost it,'' he said. ``They realized what it could have been. That's a scary sight. You can be in a car and be all right, but when you get out and look at the damage done, you're like, `It could have been so much worse.' ``Iverson said some other cars had pulled over to offer assistance, but when the police arrived ``they said they had everything under control.''``I've seen accidents before, but usually you see police, fire trucks,'' Iverson said Tuesday. ``Nine times out of 10, the people are getting assistance. Here, I didn't see anybody. I saw a car parked (nearby) on the grass, with the (headlights) shining, but I didn't see anybody.''Iverson said that one of his friends later stopped at the hospital to check on the situation. He said he had not had contact with either of the girls since the accident.``It was kind of crazy, to be rescued by someone of that nature,'' Mellon said. ``He didn't have to stop.''But Snoparsky, a 2005 graduate of Trinity College now living in Vermont, felt compelled to let people know what Iverson had done.``I'm a huge Iverson fan,'' Snoparsky said. ``I think people just don't hear enough about the good side of him.''As for Mellon and her cell phone, ``I was in the car one day and thought about sending a text message. I waited until I got home.''