Being a superfan of Gwen Stefani might have saved one woman's life — at least she sees it that way.
Back in September, a New York woman named Maddie Cole was at her subway stop awaiting a train's arrival when an unidentified man pushed her onto the tracks. Following the assault, Maddie was knocked unconscious and left battered and bruised.
After regaining consciousness, Maddie realized she needed to pull herself up onto the platform to avoid getting run over by an oncoming train. It was then that she was reminded of all the times she's been called up on stage during Gwen's concerts. In those instances, she also had to pull herself up, albeit under much different circumstances.
"It's because Gwen's called me on stage so many times. That's why my body knew what to do," she told Fox 5 News in New York.
Most recently, Maddie was called on stage during Gwen's Las Vegas residency show. The stage, she said, was the same height at the subway platform. In the life-and-death situation, Maddie was able to hoist herself up to safety. In a roundabout way, Gwen (or rather her stages) gave the 22-year-old confidence that she had the upper body strength to lift herself up and save her own life.
"You never think you're gonna be in a moment when you're like, 'I need to live,'" Maddie said. "That's all I could think about."
The "Hollaback Girl" singer even spoke about the attack during a recent Wall Street Journal interview.
"It's Maddie [Cole]. I know her and I follow her. In fact, I just saw her, right when we left 'The Drew Barrymore Show,'" Gwen said. "She's come to a million of my shows, she dresses like me. I don't follow a ton of fans, but a few years ago when I was doing the Vegas show, I started following people randomly. Then you think you know them because you see them every day. She happens to be one of them."
"The fact that that happened to her, I was like, 'You need to move out of the city,'" Gwen said.