A 49-year-old North Center man who was enjoying a beer and a cigarette on his front porch Monday evening is being hailed as a good Samaritan after he helped out a man with engine trouble and ended up saving a 14-year-old who claimed the driver tried to rape her, police said.



The Northside man, who asked that his name not be used, said he spotted a man pushing a beat-up 2001 Dodge van down the 1800 block of West Cuyler about 10 p.m. with a girl behind the wheel.



"There was this little girl steering,'' he said, thinking they might be a couple who'd just gotten into an accident because the van's radiator was "spewing antifreeze'' and it was dinged up in front.



The man noticed that the man doing the pushing, Richard A. Velasco, 23, was "not getting too far,'' so he offered to help.



After stepping off his porch nearby, the man walked up to the driver's window to push and was assisting the "tiny" girl maneuver the older van. He noticed that the girl was trying to motion to him and appeared to be trying to say something to him.



After getting the van into a parking spot the man began walking back to his home.



"I only made it 15 or 20 feet when she was right at my heels,"the man said. "She kept saying, 'Help me, help me, hide me. He was trying to rape me,'" he said.



"She was scared to death,'' said the man, who realized Velasco, who was still inside the van, probably didn't know the girl sneaked out of the van.