From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankarvedanten. This is my unsung hero, stories where one person reached

out to help another in a time of need.

I do not know the full name of my unsung hero.

I...

She came straight up to me, she looked me in the eyes and she smiled

so whoever you are thank you so much

today's story comes from Daniel Willingham.

In 2010, I was driving home to Central Virginia from Maryland where I'd been giving a talk for work and I got a call from my wife who was with our children visiting family in Canada.

She knew I was driving and the first thing she said was pull over so I knew this couldn't be good.

And indeed she was calling from Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto. Our daughter, Espree, was in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.

She had some sort of virus. We never did find out what it was, but she had a chromosome disorder that made

any illness even just a cold and ordeal for her and when my wife called

a spree was on a ventilator. So there was real reason to think she might not survive this.

So I hang up and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get to Canada.

I can't just go to the airport because I don't have my passport with me,

so I have to drive home.

That's a couple of hours.

And when I get there, I book a flight to Toronto later that evening, and that's when I realize

my passport had expired. Now you can get an emergency passport renewal if it's literally a matter of life or death.

So our pediatrician got on the phone with the State Department, verified that it was life or

death, but I had to do the paperwork at a State Department office in downtown

Washington.

...