AUBURN – Susan Berube feels somewhat vindicated. When her soggy Saab was pulled from the water Friday after rolling into the Androscoggin River, any doubts she had about her parking prowess were eradicated.

The transmission had been left in reverse as it’s supposed to be, she said. “And when they got it up out of the river, the emergency brake was on.”

So ends speculation that the 42-year-old Lewiston woman was negligent when she parked her car in a lot to go eat dinner at Pat’s Pizza on Center Street. So ends the embarrassment Berube suffered in the days after the mishap.

“I shut the phone off and kept my head low the rest of the weekend,” she said.

Most people – police, witnesses and employees at Pat’s Pizza – agree that everything that could go wrong did go wrong for Berube Friday night.

“It was horrible luck,” said Don Freve, assistant manager at the restaurant.

Berube’s car slid from a reasonably flat parking spot in spite of the emergency brake and the transmission shifted into reverse. It slipped away even as an unidentified man tried to haul it back from an embankment with his truck. The Saab slid all the way to the river below in spite of a row of trees that should have halted its progress.

Divers and a tow crew hauled the car back to land hours after it went in. The bill for the removal, Berube said, was $1,600.

“That’s ouch,” she said.

The Blue Book value of the Saab is listed at $5,400, lower than early estimates of $10,000. Whether or not her comprehensive insurance will cover the loss remains to be seen.

When Berube came out of Pat’s Pizza with her daughters, the Saab had inexplicably rolled forward to the top of a sharp embankment 30 feet above the river.

“When we came out, it was up on two wheels,” she said.

A would-be hero came to the rescue, offering to use a strap attached to his pickup truck to pull the car back to safety.

“I think I told him, ‘just secure it. Make sure it doesn’t fall,” Berube recalls. After the strap broke and the Saab made the ugly descent, the man in the truck drove away. The Saab squeezed between trees, hit the river with a splash, and became submerged.

“It went pretty quick,” Berube said. “I got to watch that.”

The man who tried to help has not been identified.

With the edge of the parking lot being reasonably level and lined with trees, it seems the odds of losing a car to the river there would be unlikely. However, Berube said she has since learned that it’s happened at least once before, to a man she knows personally.

With that in mind, an unsettling idea clouds her thoughts as she recalls the Friday night misfortune.

“What if my kids had been in the car?” she said. “My concern is that there should be a barrier there, a railroad tie or something.”

She won’t get any argument from Pat’s Pizza. Having cars disappear from the parking lot is not good for business, and there is safety to consider. The restaurant managers got together and decided to do something to ward off nasty luck in the future.

“We’re going to be getting parking barriers and railroad ties out there,” Freve said.

Berube has no practical explanation for the terrible luck with which she was afflicted Friday night. It had seemed like a fine day, she said. Until her Saab went into the drink.

“It was Friday,” she said. “It was the second day of summer.”