Stanford Washburn, a 48-year-old homeless man, sits at his North Las Vegas foxhole and recounts Saturday's incident. Photos by Clint Karlsen. Stanford Washburn Stanford Washburn shows where he and other transients helped save the life of a girl trapped beneath a car.

Blood covered the little girl's face. Her legs and arms and torso were twisted in a way that a contortionist could never duplicate. When Stanford Washburn saw the child trapped beneath a car Saturday, he felt as though he were staring at one of his daughters.

"I could see them in her eyes from time to time beneath all the blood, " the 48-year-old homeless man remembered Monday morning, a chill wind blowing his long black hair in his face. "I mean, I knew it wasn't one of my little girls, but I remember them when they were that little, and I knew it was somebody's little girl. I was devastated by the accident. I just couldn't let her die. I could see she was still alive from her chest going up and down. I chanted to her, 'Don't go from us. Be well. Just be well.'"

It was 2:30 p.m. Saturday as the one-eyed Washburn sat drinking beer with friends on a cement wall between a Jack In The Box restaurant and the Silver Nugget Bowling Center near Lake Mead and Las Vegas boulevards in North Las Vegas. He still sees the 9-year-old girl, who had been waiting across the street with an older woman, suddenly run into the street, straight into the path of a late model Cadillac.

Brakes screamed. So did the older woman. Washburn is sure he could hear the girl, who was being dragged under the car, yelling "No."

By 2:31 p.m., he and a few inebriated, frail friends picked up the 5,000-pound Cadillac that had trapped the girl under its carriage.

Washburn, who wears an eye patch and sunglasses to cover where an eye was blown out by a firecracker, wasn't far from the North Las Vegas field he calls home when he helped the girl, who is now in serious condition at University Medical Center. He lives across from the Silver Nugget in a vacant field strewn with old clothes, dead rats, plastic bags, cigarette butts, beer cans and wine bottles.

To make it easier to sleep at night, Washburn has dug a shallow foxhole to fight off the wind. He covers himself with an old sleeping bag that marks his spot when he isn't there.

On Monday morning, other homeless men and women hunkered down beneath bushes and blankets to fight off the cold. As Washburn returned to his home, a man yelled out, "Hey, chief." Washburn is an American Indian who grew up in Shiprock, N.M., on a Navajo reservation.

Not far from Washburn's foxhole, in an area where a bulldozer might once have dug, he found the four jackets he sleeps in and wears virtually every day this autumn.

His size 12 boots come from the same hole. What few toiletries he has, including toilet paper, are inside a small backpack. His wallet carries identification.

He has nothing more, except for a stocking cap.

"This place has been good to me," he said, scratching his pock-marked face.

But he can't erase the bad memories of Saturday.

Once the girl was hit, Washburn recalls yelling at the men near him, "Let's go."

After seeing the girl was still alive, he yelled at the men to pick up the rear of the car. Seconds later, the car was off the child.

"What is so incredible is that we have a bunch of transients here, all were probably intoxicated, saving a little girl's life," said officer Tim Bedwell, a spokesman for the North Las Vegas Police Department. "It's wonderful that the child has been upgraded from critical."

The driver of the car, a 66-year-old woman, has not been cited in the accident. She was so upset by the accident, Bedwell said, that she is undergoing crisis counseling. At first, visitors to the scene thought alcohol was involved. Half-finished cans of Steel Reserve 211, a high potency malt liquor, were strewn everywhere by the drinking vagrants, dropped as the men ran to the save the child.

When police came, most of the rescuers ran. "They had probably had warrants out for them," said Washburn, who isn't sure how many men actually helped lift the car.

Washburn's bouts with the law have come from trespassing, public intoxication, jaywalking, and carrying beer in an open container. Years ago, when he drove, he said he was convicted of driving while intoxicated. Bedwell said no warrants are out for Washburn.

"I never want to hurt anybody," Washburn said. "I just want to help people."

Bedwell said Monday that he doubts the men could have picked up the car if a child had not been underneath. "It shows how humans react to saving a life regardless of their circumstances," he said.

Washburn's circumstances are, at best, stark. He has been on the move since he left his native New Mexico 20 years ago after what he terms a "bad common-law marriage." He has been able to beat death, he said, by being continually aware of his surroundings, by moving constantly. "I never stay anywhere for more than a few months so people don't get used to me and beat me," he said.

By his own admission, he hasn't been able to beat the bottle.

His daughters, Shonia and Charlene, who live in Farmington, N.M., were relieved Monday to hear he was OK.

"We miss him so much," Shonia said in a long distance phone call Monday. "It's been years since I've seen him. I wish he'd come see his two-year-old grandson. He's a good man, but drinking has been in the middle of everything bad."

The sisters say their brother is now in "some kind of trouble" in Arizona.

"I think he's trying to take after his father," Charlene Washburn said.

Washburn said he trained as an auto and diesel mechanic, but drinking and fights with his mother-in-law spurred him to take to the road. Over the past 20 years he has lived in California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Montana. He often works day jobs to keep himself in beer and traveling money. Food stamps provide his grub. He comes to Las Vegas regularly in hopes of winning big at the slots. He has lived off Las Vegas Boulevard since September.

"I've never won anything at the slots, though," he said.

He prefers living outside to missions set up for the homeless.

"There are too many germs inside," he said.

There are times when Washburn calls himself homeless. There are times when he doesn't.

"The sky and the land are mine," he said. "So I'm really not homeless."

But then Washburn will also say this:

"People are greedy. That's why they always want to get rid of homeless people like us. They don't want us to enjoy the land."

On Monday afternoon, Washburn borrowed a cell phone to call his family.

He stared up at the sun and wept as he talked to his daughters.

"I can't come home because I'm not together yet," he said. "You're better off without me. But tell grandma I love her."