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 was my...

Max saw me, came over, and asked how I was doing and if I needed help.

So whoever you are, thank you so much.

Today's story comes from Karen DeBoer.

About 30 years ago, when Karen was a freshman in college,

she was accepted into her school's prestigious choir program.

That year, they would be traveling to China and Japan for an

international tour, and she was determined to make the most of it. One of the choir's first performances

was at a church about an hour away from campus. But the morning of the show, she woke up late

and ended up missing the bus. And I was like, this is the end of

everything, because what if they say, well, you're not mature enough to be in this group? Try again

next year. Then the international tour was out, and I was just afraid that my mistake had ruined it.

And this is before cell phones. I can't call anybody.

So I just kind of wandered out into the hallway in my dorm room, kind of whimpering. And that's

probably why my roommate across the hall came out to see what was up. Her name was Pam.

And our relationship was a bit prickly. And a lot of that was on me because I had just gotten to college. I had freshman friends and we were out on our own for the first time. And we were having fun. So we would run up and down the halls, we would knock on doors and

run away, but we made a lot of noise. And we didn't particularly think about how that affected

others on the same floor. Pam would come to us and ask us to be quiet because she was trying

to study or because she was trying to sleep. So Pam was the one that I saw across the hall

when this happened. I told her my whole tale of how I'd messed up and I couldn't get to the

...