CONCORD TWP — For Emily Moore and her little brother, Rodger, goofing off with their father's jack ended in more than child's play.

The innocent activity two weeks ago began at the family's home Nov. 30 on Zion Church Road and ended with Emily, 10, jacking an 1981 Camaro off her father's chest. The car had slipped off wooden blocks and trapped him there, struggling for breath.

"I was riding my bike and I heard a kaboom!" said 5-year-old Rodger, typically called Rodgee.

Alerted by the noise, Rodgee rode to where his father, also named Rodger, had been pulling the motor and transmission from the vehicle, which slipped into neutral as Moore unbolted the shifter cable.

"Dad, did that car fall on you?" Moore recounted of his son's reaction to the incident. "With what breath I had in me I said, 'Yes.' (Then I) sent Rodgee down to get Emily."

With Moore's wife away at work, Emily was the only other person at home. She had been selling cookies to her cousin on the telephone.

"At first (Rodgee) said, 'Dad's under the car.' I said 'Yeah. I know,'" Emily said. But Emily soon understood the car had fallen off its blocks.

She then raced to Moore, who instructed her to retrieve a cell phone that had bounced out of his reach.

"I thought, 'Oh my God. What am I going to do now?' I did everything he told me to in the little short breaths that he had," she said.

As Emily called her uncle on the cell phone, Rodgee pedaled to a neighbor's for additional help. Henry, their spaniel, trailed behind him.

Moore then instructed Emily to fetch a heavy jack capable of lifting 3 tons. Earlier that day, Moore said his children had been playing with the jack. "One was standing on it and one was jacking it up," he recalled.

With tears streaming intermittently, Emily struggled to roll the jack's small, stiff wheels through the stubborn gravel where Moore lay. "I can't do it, Dad," she said. "Yes, you can," he coached.

"Emily and Rodgee are two kids that listen the best," Moore later said. "These two are my heroes."

With the jack finally in place, Emily attempted to raise the car, a task that required turning, not pumping, the jack handle — but the plastic handgrip had come loose, spinning idly around the metal lever. Moore then told Emily to lower her hands and grip the lever itself instead of trying to turn the grip.

As Emily was trying to raise the car off her father, several of whose ribs had been broken, a spontaneous series of telephone calls was also occurring. The cousin who was talking to Emily on the phone had alerted his mother, Diana Moore, who called Rodger's wife, Katrina, a nurse at Butler Memorial Hospital.

A family friend happened to catch the news over a police scanner and alerted another family friend in Connecticut, where he is stationed in the Navy. That friend called the couple's daughter, Erin West, 19, back in Pennsylvania, who alerted their son, 18-year-old Patrick West.

While taking the call at Friedman's grocery story, where Patrick works, he could hear sirens in the background. "I hope they're not going to my house," Patrick had joked unknowingly.

By the time Emily had raised the jack enough to take the pressure off her father's chest, people began arriving. Moore said just as the Camaro was lifted, the head of their neighbor, Jack Fry, appeared under the car. "What do you want me to do?" he asked. "Jack this thing up and get me out of here," Moore answered. "Pull me by my ankles. I don't care. Just get me up."

"His face was gray," said Fry, attesting to Emily's struggle to raise the awkwardly placed jack.

Fry extended his hand to Moore, but Moore was in too much pain to pull himself up off the ground.

Diana Moore, by that time on the scene, was relaying information to Moore's wife, Katrina, by phone. Since Diana Moore is also a nurse at BMH, she could describe from a medical perspective what was happening.

Although Diana Moore called an ambulance, questionable EKG readings prompted the decision to fly Rodger by medical helicopter to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he remained for several days.

Fry said by the time the helicopter arrived at a nearby church, as many as 40 people had assembled there.

Katrina Moore said Emily, who has a mild form of cerebral palsy, could have faced more difficulty than most children with the physical task she performed that day. Katrina attributed part of Emily's success to karate instruction, which seems to improve her daughter's strength and balance.

Emily still nursed sore upper body muscles for several days after the incident, her mother said.

With several broken ribs, Moore will spend the coming months recovering, unable to work at his job as a self-employed contractor who does home restoration and other construction. "It's no way to get a vacation," he said.