In
1998, two train conductors in Indiana spotted a two-year-old girl on the
tracks. They put on the brakes, but there wasn’t enough time to stop. So one of
them climbed onto the front of the train and kicked her out of the way.
By putting on the brakes, the
conductors were able to slow the train to 10 mph. The conductor who climbed on
the front of the train considered jumping off to sprint ahead of the train and
grab her, but he would’ve had to stay ahead of it while running on an inclined,
gravel bed. So instead, he lowered himself onto the snow guard at the very tip
of the train. As they approached, the girl rolled off the rail onto the
rock-covered edge of the tracks, but she was still close enough to get hit by
the train. So the conductor kicked her, and then jumped off to check on her. He
wasn’t sure if he had successfully gotten her out of the way. But he had — the
kick had knocked her down an embankment.
He ran and scooped her up. She
was bleeding from a cut on her head and had bumped her lip, but that was all.
When paramedics arrived and tried to take the girl from the conductor, she
clung to his shirt and didn’t want to let go.
In
2013, a 14-year-old boy in Michigan saved an abduction victim who was being
chased by her kidnapper. The boy hid her in his house and stood guard with a
hunting knife while the kidnapper tried to get in.
The 14-year-old boy’s name is
James Persyn III. He was home with his two younger siblings, ages 11 and two
when he heard banging at the front door and a woman screaming to be let inside.
He opened the door to see a woman with clear, packing tape wrapped around her
with bruises on her face and a broken arm.
The woman was a college senior who
had been abducted from the school parking lot by a 30-year-old ex-convict named
Eric Ramsey. Ramsey had taken the woman to his mother’s house, bound her in
tape, and raped her. He then put her in his car, and while driving told her he
was going to kill her. She jumped out of the moving car and ran to a house.
When James opened the door, she explained someone was trying to kill her, and
then Ramsey pulled into the driveway.
James locked all the doors and
took the woman, his siblings, and the family dog to hide in the bathroom. He
grabbed a hunting knife he had recently got as a Christmas gift. The woman
called 911, and James called his father.
Ramsey was banging on the front
door and shouting “Let me in or I’ll kill you.” After a while, he gave up and
decided to burn down the house. He poured gas around the base of the house, lit
it, and left. The father got there while the fire was still manageable and put
it out. The police arrived shortly thereafter.
Some
prison inmates in California sign up to fight wildfires, at times risking their
lives for less than $2 an hour.
There are about 4,000 inmates in
California’s firefighter program. To join the program, inmates have to pass a
fitness test and then are given as little as three weeks of training instead of
the three-year apprenticeship that firefighters typically go through. Although
they only make $2 an hour, the pay is still better than other jobs available in
prison which typically pay between eight cents and 95 cents per hour.
But some of the inmates say they
would do it for free just for the experience and the feeling it gives them. “It
feels good, when you see kids with signs saying, ‘Thank you for saving my
house, thank you for saving my dog.’ It feels good that you saved somebody’s
home, you know?”
Several inmates have died
fighting fires. In 2016, a 22-year-old female prisoner died with less than two
months left on her sentence.
In
2014, a 15-year-old in Pakistan named Aitazaz Hassan tackled a suicide bomber.
The bomber then set off his bomb. Hassan prevented the bomber from reaching a
high school with more than 1,000 students.
Hassan was running late for
school that day and was on his way there with two friends. Then a stranger
wearing a school uniform stopped them and asked directions to the school. This
made the boys suspicious. They lived in Hangu, a troubled district of Pakistan
that has been hit hard by terrorist attacks.
Hassan’s friends backed off and
the stranger tried to get away, but Hassan pursued him and started throwing
rocks at him. As the bomber approached the school gates, Hassan tackled him. As
they scuffled, the bomb detonated killing the bomber and Hassan and injuring
two others. Hassan likely saved the lives of hundreds of students. For Hassan’s
act of heroism, the school was renamed after him.
In
2017, a homeless man in Las Vegas saved two children from a fire. To get them
out, he had to pull on a locked security door until it bent enough to open.
A homeless man named Anival
Angulo was walking down the street when he saw smoke coming from an apartment
unit. He walked closer to check it out and heard children screaming. So he
jumped over a locked gate and tried to open the door. But there was a steel
security door that was deadbolted shut. There was a three-year-old girl on the
other side who couldn’t open it. So Angulo yanked on the door until it bent
enough that the deadbolt unlatched and it opened. While pulling the girl to
safety, through the smoke he saw an infant’s leg on the floor. So he went back
inside and rescued a 10-month-old baby.
The children’s grandfather was
home and in a back bedroom when the fire broke out. It was caused by a pan of
cooking grease igniting on the stove. The grandfather wasn’t able to get to the
children because of the fire. But some other good Samaritans helped the
grandfather get out through a back window. The fire department said if it
wasn’t for Angulo’s heroism the children certainly would have died.
In
Louisiana in 2017, a 56-year-old woman saved a police officer by jumping on the
back of a 28-year-old man that was attacking him. The attacker was hitting the
officer with his own baton and tried to grab his gun until the woman pulled his
hand away.
In Louisiana, a
police officer found a 28-year-old man sleeping in his car. The officer could
see drug paraphernalia in the car, so he tried to arrest him. But the man
fought the officer and started hitting him over the head with his own baton. A
56-year-old woman named Vickie Williams-Tillman was driving by and stopped
to ask if the officer needed help. He didn’t respond, but he locked eyes with
her, and the woman realized he couldn’t speak. She called 911, then got out of
her car and jumped on the attacker’s back. She pulled the attacker’s hand away
when he tried to grab the officer’s gun. More police arrived shortly and
arrested the man. The police department said her act of heroism may have saved
the officer’s life. She said she only did what needed to be done, and that “you
don’t think about the risk.”
After
the Fukushima nuclear disaster, a group of elderly retirees volunteered to help
with the cleanup so younger workers could avoid the radiation.
A retired engineer came up with
the plan after seeing young men on the news working in areas with dangerous
levels of radiation. He said it made more sense for old men to do the work
because by the time they could develop cancer from radiation exposure, they
would have died of natural causes anyway.
“I probably have 13 to 15 years
left to live. Even if I were exposed to radiation, cancer could take 20 or 30
years or longer to develop.”
So, he started contacting some of
his retired friends and later used social media to gather more volunteers. In
April 2011, they formed a group called the Skilled Veterans Corps for
Fukushima. By 2012, it had 700 members, and most of them were skilled engineers
and technicians. Though the group gained some attention around the world,
Japanese media didn’t seem to take them seriously, and some Japanese
politicians were initially opposed to the plan. The politicians argued that the
disaster was being managed, and they did not require the help of a “suicide
squad.”
Eventually, they were allowed to
go inside the plant for a group inspection, but their offer to stay and help
was rejected. They were told there was “no room” for them to work there.
Representatives of the group have traveled to the US to ask the government to
put pressure on Japan to better handle the disaster cleanup. The group’s
founder said there’s still time for the government to change its mind about accepting
more help since the cleanup will likely take decades.
In
1940, a Polish resistance fighter deliberately got imprisoned at Auschwitz. His
plan was to gather intelligence and organize inmate resistance. He provided
reports that were among the first information to reach Western Allies about the
true nature of the camps.
Witold Pilecki was a cavalry
platoon commander in the Polish Army when the Germans invaded. After his
government surrendered, he founded the Secret Polish Army. Then he came up with
his plan to get into Auschwitz. When the Germans were conducting a
“street roundup,” he deliberately got caught.
Once inside, he created an
underground organization among the inmates. They focused on helping other
inmates by improving morale, relaying news from the outside, and providing
extra food and clothing. They also trained inmates on how to help take over the
camp if the Allies launched a rescue operation.
Using a radio built by inmates,
he broadcasted reports on conditions in the camp and the number of inmate
arrivals and deaths. The Polish resistance forwarded the reports to the British
government. The reports were a key source of information for the Allies as
little was known about the camp. At that time, it was assumed to be a large
prison rather than a death camp.
He had hoped the Allies would
choose to assault the camp or at least airdrop weapons into it, but those plans
were rejected as impossible to carry out. So Pilecki decided to break out and
see if he could convince them in person to rescue the inmates. In April 1943,
he and two other inmates overpowered a guard when they were working the night
shift at a camp bakery located outside the fence and escaped.
In
2013, when a garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh, a worker in another
garment factory across the street rushed in to help. Over two days, he pulled
more than 30 people from the rubble. Three of the people he rescued had body
parts pinned down by debris, and he performed amputations so he could pull them
to safety.
The rescuer’s name is Didar
Hossain. One of the people he saved was a young girl he found on the second day
of his rescue efforts. Her right hand was trapped. Hosssain realized the only
way to save her was to amputate the hand, so he went to find a doctor to help.
The doctor said he wouldn’t go into the wreckage because he was too afraid of
another collapse. But he gave Hossain a knife and some anesthetic and told him
to do it himself.
Hossain said that both he and the
girl screamed and cried as he amputated her hand. He later rescued a man by
amputating his leg and another man by amputating his foot. When Hossain went to
visit the girl in the hospital, he apologized that he wasn’t able to save her
without cutting off her hand. She replied, “If you hadn’t done it I wouldn’t
have got out alive; it’s I who should say sorry to you for the hardship you
went through in order to rescue me.”
In
2014, a police officer pulled over a speeding driver in upstate New York and
discovered it was a frantic father trying to get his 22-month-old son to the
hospital. The boy was not breathing. The officer quickly drove them to the
hospital while simultaneously giving the boy chest compressions.
The officer’s name is Patrick
Hildenbrand. When he had tried to pull over the speeding car, the father
slammed on his breaks, jumped out, and ran toward the police SUV cradling his
son in his arms and yelling that he wasn’t breathing.
Hildenbrand was previously a
firefighter for 17 years and knew the importance of starting CPR as soon as
possible. At that point, he had to make a quick decision about whether to start
CPR and wait for paramedics or race to the hospital. After loading the father
and son into the backseat of his vehicle, he took off for the hospital. As he
drove, he reached his hand through the partition and into the backseat so he
could do chest compressions and feel for a pulse.
The emergency room doctor said
the boy probably wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t for Hildenbrand starting
CPR on the way to the hospital. “The earlier you start it, the better outcomes
you have.”
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