ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Time now for "My Unsung Hero" from the team at the Hidden Brain podcast, a series about people whose kindness left a lasting impression. Today's story comes from Terry Hill. When she was 4 years old, Hill and her two young siblings Julie and Mikey were left in the car as their father ran into a donut shop. This was 1968, when leaving children unattended for a short time was common. What happened that day would become a story Hill has told her entire life.
TERRY HILL: I was in the back seat. My sister was 2. She was in the front seat. And then my little brother, who was 1 year old, he was in the front seat as well, but he was crying. So I said to him, play car-car, Mikey, 'cause I thought that might distract him. So he had his hands on the steering wheel, and he's moving them around, playing car because none of us were in car seats. That just wasn't a thing back then. So I guess moving the steering wheel, he somehow hit the gear shift and put it into neutral, and the car started rolling backward - just slowly at first - down this incline toward a two-lane highway at the bottom.
So I see the cars whizzing back and forth. I tried to get us out by lunging over the bench seat to open the door. It was a two-door car. And of course, the door was too heavy for me - a 4-year-old. I remember praying. My dad is running out of the doughnut shop, but right in front of him is this young guy. He runs to the car, he gets the door open, he scoots my brother over and he puts the brake on. He stopped the car. He saved us from crashing at the bottom of the hill into this highway, traffic coming both ways.
And even though it seemed like slow motion at the time, it happened so fast and had a huge effect on me for decades. I mean, even now, I just spoke to my sister about it recently. It's just really amazing that a young man in his late teens or early 20s would run after a car that's rolling downhill - like, see that there's kids in the car, no doubt - and act so quickly to get the door open, get in and put the brake on.
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HILL: He must not have hesitated for a moment. He just saw what needed to be done and acted immediately. And we don't know who he is or if he's still around or if he remembers doing that, but we really have family history of this person that we are so grateful to. I really appreciate that man.
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ARI SHAPIRO: Terry Hill lives in Blakeslee, Pennsylvania. You can find more stories of unsung heroes and submit your own at myunsunghero.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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