Not all heroes wear capes….
1. A second chance on life.
Last year on Memorial Day weekend, I was at a swimming pool and heard screaming. I turned around and saw someone jump into the water and swim towards a boy that was underwater. I swam over and as soon as I got there, someone pulled the boy’s lifeless body from the pool. His mother was absolutely hysterical. I’ve never heard a woman scream like that before. He had no color, and no pulse. I performed compression only CPR for what seemed like an eternity.
No response, so I re-assessed and asked for help. My friend stabilized his head and a bystander gave breaths. After about a minute or two he finally coughed up water and his color instantly returned. I held him against my chest while people were looking at him, in disbelief. As he was looking at everyone, I could feel his heart rate increase until he started crying. At that moment, I knew all was going to be okay. Medics got there, asked me a few questions and they took him to the hospital. Medics told me he was going to be fine. I walked back to my friends, dried off and put my face into the towel. When I looked up, the bystanders were waiting to shake my hand. This was easily the best moment of my life.
JesusWasAHippie
2. A man didn’t die because my buddy and I pulled him from a burning 18 wheeler.
One of the greatest accomplishments of my life.
ExplosionofFlavor
3. You need to calm down.
This two year old was waddling around the pool’s edge. Their parents were nowhere to be found. The child began to lose their balance and fell into the pool. I was the only one there to swim over and get the kid out of water and to safety. When the parents came back, they were pissed at me because their child was crying. They said I scared the child.
Macabalony
4. “Highlight of my career.”
I work as a loan officer at a credit union. An older gentleman and his wife came in frantic asking for a loan. They needed 3 grand immediately. Like in half an hour. I sat down and started to do the loan. It was then he told me that his daughter was a drug addict and was packing up her stuff to move with her boyfriend/convicted child molester out of state with her 6 year old daughter. They needed the money to hire a lawyer to get emergency custody of his grand daughter.
I pulled his credit and when I saw it I knew it was going to come back as an immediate decline. I asked to be excused and walked a couple cubes down. I called our underwriting department and spoke to one. I told him look I don’t care if we don’t ever get our money back on this loan. This is about the life of a little girl literally at stake. He approved the loan for me. They had their money twenty minutes later and were flying out the door. A couple of weeks later someone told me there was a gentleman up front waiting for me. (Continues on next page!)…
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(Continued)… I walked up front and the same man was standing there with a little girl. He didn’t say a word he just wrapped his arms around me and hugged me and cried. The little girl said thank you so much. I started crying. That interaction is still the highlight of my career and probably always will be. I still see him from time to time and I’ve checked his account and he paid back every penny of that loan even though it took him a little longer than expected. This was two years ago and he still has custody of his grand daughter and she’s doing well. So I don’t know if this story fits here but I think I had a hand in stopping imminent disaster.
OptimusMatrix
5. 0 to 1,000
Working at a casino as security when I get called to handle a situation in the women’s restroom. I get there and a waitress is yelling for help telling me to come into the women’s restroom and help her. I walk in and there is a young woman laying in a pool of her own vomit. I noticed the female earlier in the night with four males. Being 21 at the time but having taken many CPR classes I start evaluating the situation and call my manager to call 911 and to find the guys that she was here with. It appeared to be an overdose as the female was unresponsive, foaming from the mouth, and soon stopped breathing. I yelled at the waitress to get to the door and find someone to help me as no other security was on site at that time.
I began chest compressions and giving her air, but nothing seemed to work. I was in pure panic mode trying to get her to breathe. After about my 3rd set I hear a rumbling and she threw up in my mouth. I wasn’t even worried about it and began compressions again. This time she began breathing and I rolled her to her side and placed my coat over her. About 5mins later the ambulance arrived and paramedics took her. I went to the men’s restroom and cleaned off. As I came out my manager told me the five guys bolted before the paramedics arrived. Luckily another patron realized what was happening and got the license plate. The males actually met her there and tried drugging her to take her back to their place, but they used too many pills and almost killed her. Never found out what happened after, but was just glad she started breathing.
dGaOmDn
6. The hero we all need.
Was sitting on my motorcycle behind a guy in his car at an ATM. He drove off after a few minutes and when I pulled up to the ATM I noticed it was asking me if I wanted another transaction. I pressed the NO button and out popped his card. I looked up and saw that he was at the light driving off down the street. I pocketed his card and gave chase, after about 3 miles I was able to pull besides his car and knocked on his glass. Cautiously he lowered his window and I presented his card to him. You can imagine how ecstatic he was. Possible financial disaster avoided.
Zaldronthesage
7. Not all heroes wear capes.
My 2 year old son was choking on some food and my wife froze and yelled to me for help. I picked him up, turned him upside down while resting on my left arm, and slapped his back.
Out came the chunk of food. My son was fine.
My wife looked at me with amazement like I was some sort of hero.
RedditBlowhard
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8. Then what happened?
So, in 8th grade, I was at this bus stop with a girl I really liked. Her friend playfully pushes her, too far, into the traffic. I held my arm in front of her, her stuff fell on the street, a car ran it over, she was safe. The following day, she comes to me and thanks me for saving her life.
Pale_Rider28
9. Woah.
I, along with several friends, saved a kid from suffocating to death under several feet of beach sand after he tried to tunnel one hole he was digging to another.
It was such an eerie kind of panic because even though we luckily witnessed the collapse, it was so quiet and calm after it happened. If we didn’t see the events take place, no one would have heard or seen the collapse and the kid would have died for sure.
lurkwizard
10. At least he had some fun.
Next door neighbour had passed out on his wooden deck waiting for the coals in his hibachi to burn down enough for grilling.
Unfortunately, the coals had gotten so hot the hibachi set the wooden block it was sitting on aflame threatening to ignite the deck of his multi-million dollar beach house– and him along with it.
I had the fun of not only saving his (and possibly my own adjacent) deck from burning to cinders, I also got to spray the crap out of a prima donna film director with a garden hose.
allenahansen
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11. That would have been bad…
I was at a wedding and they had a beautiful, extravagant cake. During the reception when everyone was giving speeches, I saw a kid reaching out to take a giant handful out of the side. It was on a stand so it would have toppled over. I ran over and jerked him away from the cake and put the fear of God in him. He stayed away from the cake and me for the rest of the night, and everything was smooth sailing.
ImMrsG
12. Lifeguards are VERY IMPORTANT
I saved some four-year old from drowning while I was life-guarding.
During summers in between college I worked as a lifeguard for this company that specializes in commercial pools at apartment complexes and town-house style developments.
This one particular pool was a nightmare. It was in a very affluent development that had TONS of kids. There were like 12 rescues at that pool alone halfway through the summer. We had three guards at it daily. To put it in perspective – most pools go the entire summer without an incident and can be manned by a single guard.
I usually didn’t work at this pool, but I was filling in for one of the guards who was on vacation. The manager advised me to be on high-alert.
Anyway it gets to be about noon that day so the pool is packed. I had my eyes on this little boy playing with his older brother and friends. He had floaties and a life vest on which is required for kids that young to be in the pool. Anyway I’m scanning the pool and I notice that the lifevest and floaties are just floating at the top of the pool and I don’t see the kid in the pool or with his brother or outside of the pool his mom. The pool is pretty packed so I start scanning and I see him right in the middle of the pool clearly in the “active drowning” stage where they are struggling and are about to sink.
In that moment of panic I sort of forgot protocol but I blew my whistle to alert the other guards and jumped in the pool and grabbed the kid and brought him to the side. He was fine – just shaken up and scared. His mom was flipping out and thanking me profusely.
If it had been five more minutes there’s no doubt he would have been dead at the bottom of the pool.
I filled out the incident report and got a raise from my boss.
crayzconnor
13. PHEW!
I grabbed a three-year-old by the waistband of her jeans as she tried to run out into a very busy street with two cars coming, one from each direction.
cmarin17
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14. DUDE!
Walked into my friends house very drunk 3 am and the OVEN was on fire, my friend passed out with a pizza in the oven and I saved his dumbass life.
laronge
15. Bro hugs
I talked an online friend out of a gang. We used to play a lot of BF3, we both are Mexicans he living in USA with his hard working mother. I told him a lot of things including how heart broken and alone his mother would be if he was killed because of the gang stuff he usually did. He moved to another city and started his life over, I feel great every time I think about it.
Spitrire
16. Sounds like someone had a long night
I had a couple of the boys over for a three-day-drinking-spree (students at the time and they came from far away so it got to be worth it).
At one point deep into the night we were on my balcony taking a smoke when we observed a totally wasted guy trying to get into the neighbouring house, failing and falling down. Since he didn’t get back up and it was freezing outside, we went down to check on him.
He wasn’t able to talk anymore, so we checked for his keys (which didn’t work for the house) and his passport (which had a name on it not to be found on the bells there). So, at three o’clock in the night, we proceeded to ring up all the parties living there, asking if their missing a very drunk guy by the name X. As it turned out, we started on the wrong side of the bells 🙂 Eventually his father took him in. (Continued on next page)…
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So while I don’t think it was cold enough for him to freeze to death (not sure though), he would surely have been VERY sick come morning.
Funnily enough, the next day when we were again on the balcony drinking beer he came out of the house together with his parents. Naturally we were cheering to him and hoisting our beers, but he pretended not to hear us.
Fenrir2401
17. Literal disaster avoided
I was working in China, and we had a process to take out Hydrogen Sulfide out of an acid gas stream. Well the customer had this guy who decided to ignore my advice… and we had a severe leak in the discharge gas line. The result was that we were about to spew out about 200,000 ppm out around the unit which happened to be in a major urban area. I had a temper tantrum and left site which stopped all work, and refused to come back to get the unit going until they fixed all the leak issues and started paying attention to my advice.
ooo-ooo-oooyea
18. “Your house is on fire.”
I noticed a weird sheen coming from my neighbors porch. Called out to my husband and asked if it was the grill. He said no and jumped into action. Ran to their front door like a crazy person and screamed your house is on fire. Then ran to the backyard. I jumped over our fence, into their yard and looked for a hose.
We caught the early stage of a house fire. Neighbors came out confused, told them to dial 911. We got hoses started, flames were 30 ft high. They were oblivious that there house was on fire and could have killed them had we not noticed.
customerservice_28