Agatha Wong (not her real name) wasn’t thinking about much beyond her frozen jaw after a visit to a Richmond Hill dentist — that is until she saw a man gagged in a trunk, with his wrists and possibly ankles bound with cloth, his eyes, distressed with fear.

Another man was standing over the trunk speaking to him and making gestures.

After passing the vehicle, Wong thought about what she had just seen and realized if this wasn’t a joke, the man in the trunk might need help — and fast.

“I thought, 'If this is serious, he might not have long to live',” the mother-of-three, who was driving through the No Frills plaza at 16th Avenue and Yonge Street, said. “I am one of these people, I don’t want to live with regrets, and if I didn’t do something and someone was injured, I’d never forget it. What if that was my kids? I would want someone to say something.”

She quickly turned her car around and tracked the vehicle into a McDonald’s drive-thru.

She still couldn’t see the licence plate, so she wheeled around the front of the vehicle and took a picture.

Just to be sure she wasn’t seeing things or making an error, she drove home and allowed her husband to view the dashboard camera video. Wong’s husband called 911 at 5:15 p.m. on Nov. 15.

Almost immediately, four York police SUVs arrived on Wong's street.

Officers fanned out across southern York Region, with a police helicopter, canine officer, emergency response units and at least two detectives on the prowl to find the victim of a kidnapping.