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 Olivia Joffrey.

When Olivia was in sixth grade, her teacher planned a Father's Day softball game, a game meant to be played by students and their dads.

But Olivia's dad couldn't be there.

He had a rare case of both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and had recently been moved into a

veteran's hospital. And my mother was heroic and did so many things to make it feel like a normal

childhood. But when your dad lives in a VA hospital

and you go visit him every Sunday in walk down the linoleum halls to a weird room that doesn't

smell like home and you see your dad sitting in there. It wasn't him.

And, you know, and then you just miss all the mundane dad things in your life, like the softball game at school.

So the softball game day arrives.

And I wasn't sure if someone was coming to represent my family.

And I looked up and all of a sudden I noticed my mom's office buddy Bob, who was the coolest guy.

He was significantly younger than my mom, probably in his late 20s.

And they worked in the same department, and she arranged for him to show up.

So Bob emerges behind the backstop in his brown bomber jacket and his big smile.

And, you know, Bob was cool.

He was like slinging slang words and high-fiving the other dads.

...