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 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 Joe Aragoni. Joe and his wife Joanie have been married for more than 30 years.

Three of their four kids are out of the house and they'd always imagine spending this

phase of their life working and planning for retirement.

But all that changed at the end of 2018 when Joni was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's at just 51.

Her condition has been devastating and for Joe it has tested the limits of his compassion and

understanding. He remembers one morning that was especially frustrating. It was

in March of 2022. She was insisting that she needed new shoes, even though she didn't need them.

So after he got tired of arguing about it with her, he agreed to take her to the shoe store.

And I'm like, okay, here, here's all the shoes here, there's, you know, aisles and aisles of shoes, you know, which ones do you like? Is there a particular color or a particular

brand? And I don't think she really understood and she goes I want to

talk to an associate and so I'm like oh right fine you just go find an associate I'm like, oh right, fine, you just go find an associate.

I'm just gonna sit down over here because this whole need

that you have for shoes, I just need a break from it.

So she starts wandering off and going around the store.

I don't see her then for a while and I finally hear her voice and she's talking to the salesperson that she found and I peek around the corner and I see them engaged in this conversation and the sales woman, Michelle, is trying to figure out what size of shoe Joni needs.

She's gently helping to get the shoe off her

...