From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is My Unsung Hero, stories where one person reached out to help another in a time of need.

My Unsung Hero is a boy named Spencer.

Every Sunday, Julie would drop off soup at our house.

I look forward to it every week.

I would say thank you for giving me one of the best gifts of my life.

Today's story comes from Claire Ock.

When Claire was in college, she waited tables at a high-end restaurant.

One night, she had a group of 12,

and a man at the table ordered two bottles of expensive wine.

Claire dreaded opening wine because she had a history of doing it wrong.

When she began to open the man's bottle,

she looked down and realized that half of the cork was stuck in her corkscrew.

I had broken the cork, and I glanced at the man who ordered the wine,

and my eyes are just saucers. I'm terrified.

And he just kind of leans over and places his hands on the bottle and looks at me and says, I got it. And he took it from my hands and kind of turned his back so no one else could

see and sort of leaned down and worked the cork. But at that point the only thing you could do was to push the other half

of the cork into the bottle. So now there's a half of cork floating in this beautiful bottle of wine

and I thought there's no way he's going to drink this. What is going to happen? He pours himself a

glass that has little tiny flex of cork in it and proceeds to drink it.

And he said, you're busy. We'll pour the rest. And the way he looked at me was so kind.

And then he leaned over and he said,

...