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 is the kind stranger who helped me get to my grandfather's funeral.

And he just says, today you tomorrow me.

And I never...

Thank you very much for changing my life.

Today's story comes from Sarah Lubarski.

Forty years ago I was living in New York City with my fiance and came home from work and realized very quickly that he was extremely

ill, he was vomiting, he was slurring his words and I knew that we had to get to the hospital. So I grabbed my purse and off we went in a taxi down to a hospital in the Lower East Side.

We sat there for a couple of hours and it was pretty clear that nobody was going to pay attention to him.

So off we went to another hospital.

The same thing happened in the second hospital, so I decided that we needed to go and find a third.

David had been complaining about this pain starting in his ear

and so we ended up lucky for us into an ear, nose, and throat hospital.

When we were getting ignored again and not being seen,

it became pretty clear from their questions and comments

that they thought David was on drugs or something else was going on and this is why he was acting the way he was acting.

So I started to get very upset in the middle of the lobby and all of a sudden this person comes up to me and says

How can I help you what's going on here? And it was a young doc all I really remember is that he had dark hair and

was wearing a white coat and I explained to him what was happening with my

fiancee David and I was afraid that something really bad was happening and he said,

you know, I just got done with my neurological residency up at Lennox Hill Hospital.

...