• Bryan Pederson of Tombal, Texas, was driving his SUV during a storm on May 16 when a tree fell and crushed his SUV. A stranger nearby helped him get out of the wreckage.
• When Pederson learned that his Good Samaritan, Veronica Marin, was a single mother whose home needed repairs, he started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for her.
• “I feel incredibly blessed to be part of Veronica’s story and would love to help change her life for the better,” he tells PEOPLE

A Texas man is giving back by helping a stranger who rescued him three months ago after a tree fell and crushed his SUV.

“We often hear ‘right place, right time’ (or in my case ‘wrong place, wrong time’),” survivor Bryan Pederson of Tomball tells PEOPLE on Friday, August 23, “but there are too many coincidences for any of this to be a coincidence.”

As CBS affiliate KHOU reported, Pederson was waiting for the light to turn green on his way home during a storm on May 16 when a large oak tree fell on his SUV, crushing them both.

He later recalled that ten more cars showed up at the scene, but all drove away. However, one of the drivers who helped was Veronica Marin, a single working mother, according to the source. She was in her car with her three children when she saw the tree fall and got out to help Pederson.

“I see the tree falling on the truck,” Marin told KHOU in Spanish. “What strikes me are all the cars that have turned around, and in front of me, I don’t know, without thinking, my motherly instinct.”

As Pederson later wrote in a GoFundMe campaign he created to help the single mother after realizing she needed help, he panicked after the tree fell and struggled to breathe as the roof of the SUV pressed against him. He tells PEOPLE that his wife was on the phone with him during the ordeal “encouraging me to find a way to breathe while I thought it was the end.”

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Pederson added that Marin and Travis Lennon, the other Good Samaritan, forced open the passenger door. Marin was then able to get into the vehicle and unbuckle Pederson’s seatbelt.

“She grabbed my arms and just kept pulling, all the while encouraging me to get out,” Pederson wrote. “I turned and maneuvered with her helping and guiding me. I got into a position where she and Travis could pull me out of the vehicle.”

A shocked Pederson sat in Lennon’s truck while she waited for emergency responders to arrive. Meanwhile, Marin returned to her car, where her children were, and drove away before Pederson could get her contact information.

Pederson tells PEOPLE that he only survived the incident with back pain.

To express his gratitude, Pederson later found Marin through Facebook. “I was emotional and kept thinking about how do you thank someone who literally saved your life,” he told KHOU.

The two met again at a fire station, where Pederson thanked Marin. He later learned that the single mother of three has chronic back pain, works full time and “struggles to make ends meet to pay her house, car and child care payments while working as many hours as possible to give her children a better life.”

When he visited her house, he found that it was in “urgent need of repair.”

“Many people in the community are amazed by her bravery and selfless act and have asked how they can help,” he wrote. “Please consider donating so we can raise money to make proper repairs to her home. If there is anything left over, we will give it to Veronica so she can support her family.”

At the time of publication, the fundraiser had already raised over $12,000.

Pederson has lavished praise on Marin. “I feel incredibly blessed to be a part of Veronica’s story and would love to help change her life for the better,” he tells PEOPLE. “She’s an incredible human being, judging by what she’s done for me.”

He also calls Marin “a heroine who is incredibly humble and God-fearing and wants nothing in return except the well-being of a complete stranger.”

“I’m so grateful that all of these things are happening,” Pederson continues. “Not because I’m ‘lucky,’ but because I’m witnessing a much bigger plan unfolding right before my eyes, and I’m blessed to be a part of it.”