AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at the Hidden Brain podcast. "My Unsung Hero" tells the stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else. And today's story comes from Caroline Davis. In the summer of 2024, Davis and her partner were doing a DIY home project that required 1,500 pounds of gravel, so she headed to a home improvement store and started filling up her Toyota Corolla.
CAROLINE DAVIS: I'm loading up my gravel. They're these 50-pound bags. I'm squatting, I'm loading, loading, and this older man comes over. And he says, hey, I don't think your car can fit that. And he says, do you know that your car has a weight limit? And I'll be honest, no. That feels to me like something your dad would tell you, and my dad died of a heart attack at age 57, so I didn't know that from him. So I'm thinking, I have to unload everything from my car. I need to get it back. We're pouring concrete at home. We need the gravel. And he says, I can load you up in my truck. Do you live nearby? And I say yes.
So this man, this stranger, he helped unload my whole car, loads up his truck. We swap phone numbers. I give him my address. And I pull on to the highway, and I just start to cry in my car because I was so grateful for the goodness of strangers, of this person helping me. And it just reminded me of my dad. The whole interaction just reminded me of my dad, of knowing that that's something that he would do. And we get to my house. He helps me unload, again, 1,500 pounds of gravel on to my driveway.
And I'm offering him things, I'm thanking him, and he's just saying, don't worry about it, don't worry about it. And I don't want him to leave empty-handed, so I have a garden, and it's the end of the season. And I just say, do you like cucumbers? And his face just lights up, and he says, I love cucumbers. So I offer him a tour of my garden. It turns out he used to be a gardener before his work got too busy. And then I give him these three big, bright green, prickly cucumbers. And he's so excited, he tucks them under his arm, and he just marches off back to his truck.
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DAVIS: And I watched him drive off, leaving behind my 1,500 pounds of gravel. And I just am so grateful for people like that, who teach me the things I don't know I don't know.
CHANG: Caroline Davis lives in San Diego, California. You can find more stories of unsung heroes at hiddenbrain.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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