MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at the Hidden Brain podcast. "My Unsung Hero" tells the stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else. Today's story comes from Emily Vinson. Emily was living in New Orleans in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit. In the aftermath, the city slowly recovered, but Emily's workplace had yet to reopen. So she got a new job at a pizza place. When she showed up her first day, she took her position behind the register. The shop was small, with pizza ovens to one side of her and the men prepping food directly behind her.
EMILY VINSON: So, you know, I'd been there for maybe an hour. I really barely knew what my job was yet. I had (laughter) had just arrived, and I just fainted. And I came to. I'd hit my head on the counter, and I came to laying on the floor of this pizza shop. And the guy making pizzas just stepped over me and opened the oven and pulled a pizza out of the oven. And almost immediately, one of the customers came behind the counter and scooped me up and took me outside and laid me on a picnic bench. My glasses had fallen off when I fainted, and I was bleeding from, like, where I'd hit kind of my eye area.
And because the city was still in really just, like, this state of disarray, the first thing that happened was a Humvee of very young National Guardsmen came. And they didn't have any real proper medical kit, so they wrapped this huge bandage around my head. And this man, Randy (ph), the one who had, like, scooped me up and taken me outside, throughout it all, he was sitting with me and kind of reassuring me and chatting with me. And he was, like, very offended on my behalf that this man had, like, pulled a pizza out of the oven before, like, attending to his employee who was, like, on the floor. The next thing I remember is the ambulance coming, and then I was taken away to the hospital after that.
It's been 20 years now since the hurricane, but I think about him all the time and just that he, like - you know, he was just there for lunch. He wasn't planning on (laughter), you know, like, tending to a young, bleeding woman. So, you know, he immediately understood that something needed to happen and that no one else was going to do anything. And I think that's, like, an incredible ability and, like, impulse to, like, immediately jump in and help someone. And I don't know, that just always made, like, a really big impression on me, and it left an impact.
I haven't really been in a lot of situations similar to this. But, man, I hope that if I see something, that I'll be that to somebody else. Just to, like, hold their hand if they're feeling scared or, you know, I can offer some reassurance or companionship for a short time. Like, I hope I am able to be that for someone else.
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KELLY: That's Emily Vinson of Austin, Texas. You can find more stories of unsung heroes and learn how to submit your own at hiddenbrain.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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