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.

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 Nora Durkin.

In 2001, Nora decided she had to tell someone about a secret she'd been carrying for more than a decade.

When she was a child, Nora says, she was sexually abused.

One day, she decided to pick up the phone and report the abuse via 311, the non-emergency

number in many communities across the United States.

And I am anticipating that the person on the other end is going to have the most negative

underdeveloped response because that's what I was used to. So I'm anticipating

a dead end. So she picks up the phone, she says 311, how can I help you, and I said,

I'm calling because I want to report a crime that occurred when I was a child.

And I don't know how to go about this, so I'm starting here.

And her response right away was, oh honey, that's horrible. Tell me what happened. And I went into the details and it was so hard to go into the details. She was just say, oh my gosh, I can't believe that happened to you.

This is so sad. Oh, this is terrible.

And then I'm like, yeah, this is terrible. And then I'm like, yeah, this is terrible. This was terrible. You're right. So it was like validation just pouring from the other end.

And again, that is not something that I was hearing from the people in my life.

I said, so what do I do? And she said, well, you got to file a report.

So that's the next step. If she could hear me now, I would thank her for believing me.

And that kid inside me that was so traumatized and so scared it was like heard that day and and nurtured and like

...