It was 3:30 in the morning on August 1, 2012. It was an ideal time to use my telescope because there's less light pollution that early in the morning. I walked outside to make sure the sky was clear before getting out my telescope, and that's when I noticed an object going slowly across the sky. 'Wow, if that's a plane, it sure is flying low', I thought. It was going slow as if it was doing surveillance. Then I noticed the lights were different from an airplane, they were all red and going in a rhythmic blink, blink, blink, blink, blink around the craft. I live two blocks from the Pacific Ocean, and it was coming from that direction going east. Lindbergh Field (airport)is in San Diego just north of me, and I'm very familiar with the flight paths of airplanes in this area. This craft was acting completely different from a plane or a helicopter. This is completely out of character for me, but I ran into the house, grabbed my purse and keys, and then jumped into my car to follow it. I had to run several red lights and stop signs as I zigzagged across town. I kept hoping the police would see me, or maybe I would come across another car, but there was nobody out that early in the morning. After 20 minutes I was on the outskirts of town, at the base of the mountains just east of San Diego. That's when I realized the UFO was slowing down, and if I didn't slow down I was going right under it!All of a sudden it stopped in mid-air. I quickly pulled over to the side of the road and turned off my car and headlights. The clock on my car said 4:00 am. I was terrified that it had noticed me following it. I scrunched down in my seat so it wouldn't see me, and decided I wasn't taking my eyes off this thing until I saw what it was going to do next. So there I sat for 45 minutes, watching this thing hovering in the sky about 20 feet away from me. And it was totally silent. This thing didn't make a sound, but my heart was pounding like crazy. After 45 minutes there was a bright flash in the sky, like the flash of a camera only much brighter. The UFO seemed to be getting smaller, but that didn't make any sense. Then I realized that it was slowly rising upwards, and the higher it got, the smaller it got. I watched as it got smaller and smaller, and eventually it was so small it just blended with the stars, but I could still see faint red lights blinking around it. It was getting light outside and, no longer fearful, I started up my car and drove home. I was very emotional on the way home. The realization hit me that all those people who've said they saw UFOs really were telling the truth. I couldn't believe what I had just experienced. I had to look one more time. I pulled my car over to the side of the road and there it was, amongst the stars, a tiny object with very faint red blinking lights. You wouldn't even notice unless you were looking for it. When I got home I felt I should call someone, but who? If I called the local police they would think I'm crazy, so I decided to call Homeland Security (as if they wouldn't think I was crazy.) I called the Miramar station (San Diego) and told the person who answered the phone what I'd just experienced. I asked if anyone else had called about it and she said no. I asked if it would've showed up on radar, and she said if it had she would've heard about it (but that doesn't necessarily mean she would've told me about it.) Anyway, I just wanted there to be some sort of record of what I'd seen. That was almost two years ago, and not one day goes by that I don't think about it. I often look up to the sky at night and wonder how many others are out there that we don't know about, looking down on us, and masquerading as stars?