Hi, I'm Dave Isay, founder of StoryCorps. This message comes from Subaru. During June, as part of the Subaru Loves to Care Initiative, Subaru and its retailers partner with Blood Cancer United to give warm blankets, patient care kits, and messages of hope to cancer patients. Learn more at Subaru.com slash care. Hey, folks, this is Max Young Rice from the StoryCorps podcast.

Just want to remind you that you can tell us your stories by calling our voicemail.

That's 702-706, talk.

This week, tell us about a time when doing the right thing was hard, but you did it anyway.

That's 702-706, T-A-L-K.

Music 706, T-A-L-K. When I'm sitting down with two people about to have their story core interview, I always take a moment right before I push record to say one thing.

If this were to be your last conversation together, what's the most important thing you want to say or ask?

And when you consider these 40 minutes to be some of your last, you don't bother talking about the small stuff.

You get right to it, to the moments in your life that have come to define you.

Because often it's in the toughest moments when we find out what we're really made of.

I know I had a matter of seconds to try to rescue you.

I'll only go home for one hour, take a shower, get dressed, didn't be there for 24-hour days.

I just remember being on autopilot and sort of in shock.

It could have been easy to just, I ain't going back over there.

I didn't sign up for all that.

We went through our archive, the largest collection of human voices in history.

To find stories about people who could have said,

I'm not doing this, I could get hurt, it's not my problem.

But they stepped up anyway because it was the right thing to do.

I'm Jasmine Morris. It's the StoryCorps podcast from NPR.

We'll start with a man named Nate Walls in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

When COVID shut down his catering company, he decided to keep cooking anyway.

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