A Pig Lay Down in Traffic and Refused to Move. She Was Trying to Save a Life.

On August 4, 1998, Jo Ann Altsman was alone in a trailer at Presque Isle, Pennsylvania when she collapsed from a heart attack. Her husband Jack was out fishing on Lake Erie. There was no one around to help.

No one human, anyway.

The Pig in the Road

Lulu was a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig who weighed about 150 pounds. She belonged to Jo Ann's daughter, but the Altsmans had been babysitting her - and the babysitting had become permanent. The bond between Jo Ann and Lulu was unusually strong.

When Jo Ann collapsed, Lulu squeezed through the trailer's dog door, cutting her belly on the frame. She waddled out to the highway and lay down in the middle of the road.

Cars drove around her. Nobody stopped.

Lulu got up, went back inside to check on Jo Ann, then went back out to the road. She did this over and over - back and forth between the trailer and the highway - each time lying in the road, each time getting ignored.

Someone Finally Stopped

A young man finally pulled over. Lulu led him back to the trailer. When he saw Jo Ann on the floor, he called 911. She was rushed to The Medical Center in Beaver, Pennsylvania for emergency open-heart surgery.

Doctors said 15 more minutes and she would have died.

Fame and Legacy

Lulu appeared on both the Oprah Winfrey Show and The Late Show with David Letterman alongside George Clooney. At the Mayflower Hotel in New York, the ASPCA awarded her a Tiffany gold hero medal.

The driver who stopped later said he almost kept going - but something about a 150-pound pig lying motionless in the road made him think twice.

Lulu died a few years later - of a heart attack. The same thing she saved Jo Ann from is what took her.