By Mike Celizic TODAYShow.com

The 75-year-old grandmother was strangled, punched, kicked, bound in duct tape and thrown in the trunk of her own car by three young adults. After 26 hours without food or water, Sandy Vinge made a silent plea to God: Either save me, or let me die.

“I told God that,” Vinge, her face still swollen and marked by ugly purple bruises, recalled to TODAY’s Matt Lauer. “Then I asked my late husband, who had just died – I said, ‘Don, tell God [to] help me.’ And he did. That night he helped me. The sheriffs came and they rescued me, because I wouldn’t have lasted long.”

Vinge had spent several days in a San Diego hospital, so badly beaten that she couldn’t even speak at first. But by Monday, the spirited woman who loves to dance was feeling well enough to get her hair done, put on a nice dress, and talk to Lauer from her La Mesa, Calif., home with her son, Daniel Allen, at her side.