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.

I don't know the name of my Unsung Hero.

And here she was trying to encourage me that it was going to be

all right. Thank you. You will forever be my unsung hero. Today's story comes from Emily Vincent.

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 for her first day, she took her position behind the register.

The shop was small, with the pizza ovens to one side of her position behind the register. The shop was small with the pizza

ovens to one side of her and the men prepping food directly behind her. So, you know, I'd been there

for maybe an hour. I really barely knew what my job was yet. I 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 Guardsman came,

and they didn't have any real proper medical kit, so they wrapped this huge bandage around my head.

And this man, Randy, 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

...