Bridger Peabody, a 3-year-old in Strasburg, Colorado was being looked after by his great-grandmother, Sharon Lewis. His parents were in the hospital with his sister, and when Bridger became tired, Lewis offered to bring him home.

When they got home, Lewis fell and hit her head on the corner of the cement step in front of her home. She couldn’t see it properly in the dark of the night.

“We went up to the backyard, dark backyard,” Lewis told 9News. “We did really good. Then we got up to the door where I was going to get the keys out. Well, I must have tripped over something just sticking up there.”

Like most toddlers, Bridger had an almost crippling fear of the dark. However, he simply could not leave his great-grandmother, who he calls “GG,” on the ground.

“She bonked her head and it popped open,” Peabody recalled. “I was scared outside, it was really dark.”

Injured to the point where she couldn’t stand up on her own, she turned to the frightened toddler. She recalled her head, face, and clothes being covered in blood from the injury. She spoke calmly to her great-grandson, told him she was okay, and tried to keep him calm.

Neighbors couldn’t hear their cries for help

At first, she urged Bridger to call for help from her neighbors.

“We tried hollering for the neighbor because we saw her lights on,” Lewis said. However, help never came. So, she asked Bridger to put on a brave face.

“I said, ‘You know what? You’re going to have to go out to the car and get my phone,'” she recalled telling Bridger. “He said, ‘It’s too dark, GG,’ and I said, ‘I know, but you’re going to have to be brave. Jesus will help you.'”

Bridger told himself, thanks to his favorite show Paw Patrol, that he needed to be brave. Her security cameras caught him saying, “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid,” before opening her car door and finding her phone.

“And he yells, ‘Yay! I did it, GG!'” she remembered with a smile.

Thanks to the toddler, she got the help she needed

After Bridger brought her the cell phone, she was able to call 911. She was taken to a local hospital, where staff told her she sustained a serious concussion and needed 22 staples in her head.

Without her toddler great-grandson’s help, she would have been in the dark alone. She feels as though he saved her life that night.

“He’s just a blessing,” said Lewis. “I call him a hero. He goes, ‘No. I’m Bridger.’ He’s not quite sure what a hero is, I think, but he definitely is.”