People Who've Actually Saved Someone's Life Share Their Stories

Image by Ulrike Mai from Pixabay

Years ago I was standing on a subway platform when I witnessed a man lying down on the tracks. A group of us––that is, other people waiting for the train––tried to coax the man out of the trackbed and convince him to hop back up onto the platform. The train was due any minute. I ended up running back to the agent's booth to ask them to notify the next train not to come into the station and another person called 911. Eventually medics arrived and were able to get that man safety. I sometimes wonder what happened to him. I never saw him again.

After Redditor disintegrationist asked the online community, "Have you ever saved someone's life? How did it happen?" people shared stories of their own.

"I don't know..."

I don't know if this really fits. I needed a kidney. My cousin volunteered. During their testing of her they found a small mass they thought was just fat. It turned out to be cancer. Most kidney cancer apparently is not caught until it's too late because your other kidney takes on the work and you don't get symptoms. She was able to get it all removed and is now cancer free (didn't even need chemo, just surgery). Anyway, she claims I saved her life. I claim she saved her own by being willing to donate.

deweygirl

"Was in the middle of a neighborhood pool..."

Was in the middle of a neighborhood pool and watched a toddler at the side of the pool (10ft end) take his floats off and then jump in the water. He curled up like a ball and began to sink quickly. I was able to reach him before he reached the bottom. He was scared but screaming. The babysitter was on her phone.

whimsical316

"Moral of the story..."

I heard a faint domestic fire alarm one night that wouldn't quit so I walked down the street to idenitfy where the alarm was coming from. I knocked on the door but there no answer. I couldn't smell smoke or feel heat off the door but decided to call the fire brigade just in case.

They arrived pretty quickly and I pointed out which unit the alarm was coming from. They walked up to the door then ran back to the truck to grab a door-banging-opening thingo and the hose reels. Next thing all this smoke is pouring out the front door and they're carrying an old lady down the stairs. Then another firey emerged carrying the lady's cat.

Turns out she had turned on the stove to cook dinner but fell asleep. The unit was filled with smoke and she would have asphyxiated, but both she and the kitty survived. She wrote me a lovely note thanking me, which was nice.

Moral of the story is to pay attention to noises/things that are out of place, it's better to be safe than sorry, and look after each other.

quadraticog

"After a long distance running event..."

I am a doctor. Even then I can count the number of times I can say I've saved someone's life on one hand with fingers left over.

I was working at an athletics event. After a long distance running event that was open entry, a person collapsed and stopped breathing. I worked with my team to stabilise them and transfer them to hospital. They needed support for their airway to keep breathing. Had they not had it they would have asphyxiated and died.

I met them with their spouse and 8yo child a few months later - actually on this day a few years ago. That was the biggest reward for me. The best feeling.

AberrantConductor

"I highly recommend..."

I donated bone marrow to a stranger given two months to live! Surprisingly easy process and haven't regretted doing it for a second.

Registered during an on-campus drive and was called within the year as a match. The whole process took a couple months, and a couple hours of my time for blood tests and doctors appointments.

I highly recommend anyone interested to join a registry. The odds are low of getting selected but the chance to save a life is worth it. I joined with Be the Match.

hedgehog_wrangler

"When I was in middle school..."

When I was in middle school, my dad took me to one of his friend's barbecues. His friend had a young son that I think was 4 or 5 at the time. Everyone had been swimming in the pool and went in the yard to go eat.

No one saw the little kid run back to the pool except for me. Before I could say anything, he jumped in without his swimmies. I ran as fast as I could to him as he thrashed in the water, and I pulled him out.

His parents were absolutely shocked and terrified. They didn't think he would do anything like that. Thankfully he ended up being fine, and it scared him out of doing it again. Always watch your kids if you have a pool. Even if you think they know better, they probably don't.

toobroketoorderpizza

"I vividly remember..."

A few friends and I saved a tourist family from drowning while surfing on the island of Oahu.

We had been surfing an outer reef on the south shore that was a good half mile or so off the coast when we noticed a family paddling out on a kayak. A single person kayak with a dad, younger daughter maybe 8 and a son maybe 12 on the nose and tail, and with an older teenage son paddling behind on a boogie board. They paddled directly into an area of the reef where 4/5 ft waves were crashing very fast and very powerfully on to pretty much dry reef. It took only seconds for us to see them go from paddling along in the kayak to seeing them all bobbing in the waves and the kayak 200 yards away, stuck on the reef.

We quickly paddled across the channel as fast as we could. We then each gave on of the kids and the dad out boards and pulled them by our leashes far enough into the lagoon and they could walk. About 100 yards of so.

I vividly remember the dad saying "I'm not panicking, I'm not panicking" over and over in a thick Russian accent and having to reassure him that he'd be ok but needs to focus on what we were doing.

Just goes to show how dangerous the ocean is and how deadly it could've been for that family if we weren't there.

jarbara

"I said no..."

Former lifeguard.

My favorite is the one girl who had a conversation with me that she didn't know how to swim but wanted to jump off the diving board anyway. I said no, get off the diving board. She jumped, I saved her life. You're welcome, girl, wherever you are.

AnthonyCumiaPedro

"It's a long..."

It's a long, detailed story but I'll keep it short:

My brother came home from work and went to use the bathroom. When he came back, he asked if I wanted to join him for a cigarette on the back porch. I said "sure" and went to get my shoes while he went out back. When I went to join him, he was laying in the backyard, pale, sweaty and barely conscience. I had to carry him inside which was no easy feat since he's taller and heavier. I put him on the floor in the kitchen and he just circled the drain in front of me. I'm an EMT and I couldn't figure out what was happening. He went into cardiac arrest and died in front of me. I did CPR while the ambulance came and got a pulse right as they entered the house. It turned out he had some bad drugs.

Even though it was a happy ending, it really f*cked me up. Its been over a year now and I think about it everyday. I can recall every detail like it happened yesterday. I've never been the same since it happened. I feel as though a part of me died in exchange for my brother's life.

throwaway-1_123

"It was one of the best things..."

I donated bone marrow to a cancer patient. It was one of the best things I've ever done.

coupon_user

"He wasn't responding..."

A drunk man in front of me ducked under the pedestrian boom gates and started crossing the railway tracks. He wasn't responding to my yelling at him to stop so I had to duck under, grab his clothes and drag him backwards.

The train only just missed him.

gingermight

"Gave my bro..."

Gave my bro the Heimlich maneuver when he choked on a chunk of hot pineapple.

shavemejesus

"A lady down the street..."

A lady down the street from my dad's house plowed her car into a light post and hit her head really hard. When we got there she was trying to start her car and crying, and she got out of the car to look at it and she couldn't walk very well. She told us she was going to just walk home, so my dad called his firefighter neighbor over and we all made conversation with her til an ambulance arrived. I honestly think if she had made it home and gone to bed she would have died from her concussion.

sugarJackal

"Left the scene..."

The one time in my life I've been useful.

I lived in Texas for a little bit a couple years ago. I was walking out of a Walmart one day with some groceries and spotted a car in a handicap spot with the driver door open. Looked to me like someone bent over grabbing their wallet/phone or something.

Didn't think much of it and no one walking by seemed to be looking at it either. Me being the suspicious person I am took another quick look back as I was coming closer to my car. I then noticed that a pair of legs had appeared underneath the door like the person had fallen and was now sitting on the ground lying back against the door jam.

I quickly ran my things to my car, threw them in and bolted to the handicap spot car. There was a middle aged man sitting there gasping for air, and barely conscious. I was initially shocked and stood for just a moment trying to figure out what to do. I tried to ask him what happened as he gestured to the inside of his car. Ran to the other side and opened the door.

Cigarette butts and cigarette packages all over the inside, but in the cup holder sat one small inhaler. Grabbed it and physically pumped the inhaler into his airway. By this time two or three people had stopped and were asking what was going on. Looked at them and told them to dial 911.

The man began to breathe normally and one of the people nearby that dialed 911 said the ambulance would be there soon. Looked at the guy on the ground and said "hey man, probably a bad time but you should really stop smoking". He replied in a somber raspy tone "I know".

Left the scene knowing he was in good hands and never got his name. If you're out there, hope you broke the habit and glad to have helped that day.

spookyboi

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People Break Down The Biggest Changes You'd See In 'Harry Potter' If It Were Set In The U.S.

Image by tookapic from Pixabay

Can you see Harry Potter at a football game in the Midwest? Chowing on a corn dog, throwing back some good ole Pepsi-Cola? Or can you picture the Harry universe living and loving in the great U. S of A? What would casting look like against the backdrop of the great harvest plains? I have so many thoughts and ideas. The first thought, the change would never work. Keep the story alive on British soil.

But, for fun, let's chat about the idea.

Redditor u/Cuish wanted all the Potter heads out there to share what American tweeks would occur in the Potterverse within America, by asking:

If Harry Potter was set in the United States, how would the story change?
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harry potter

People Break Down Which Tasks Are Not As Simple As People Think They Are

Luke van Zyl/Unsplash

Life isn't as simple as one may think. It's not always easy to take a step back and look at the big picture, but when there's over seven billion people on the planet, there's no way things are as cut and dry as they seem.

Everyone's experiences are different going through life. We may not be able to see the complexities it if we haven't lived it ourselves.

So we went to Reddit because we wanted to see what's not as simple as people think it is.

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challenges

People Explain Which Double Standards Need To End Immediately

RobinHiggins/Pixabay

Double standards are something we all live with and, quite likely, find extremely annoying. Things like men being expected to hide their emotions—or not have them at all—or women being expected to stay home and support a couple's children, everyone is generally harmed by double standards.

This is especially true when the double standard isn't clear until someone violates it and then has to deal with anger, ridicule, or sometimes even violence as a result.

Content Note: this article mentions suicide and sexual assault, reader discretion advised.

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double standards

People Describe The Most Valuable Item They've Ever Found In The Garbage

Image by jacqueline macou from Pixabay

They say one man's trash is another man's treasure - and sometimes that saying is pretty literal.

Lots of people build entire businesses picking up cool stuff on bulk-pickup trash day, and upcycling it into something even better that people are willing to pay for.

Sometimes, you might even end up with something pristine and usable right away.

Reddit user JampackedAlborn1976 asked:

What is the most valuable item that you have seen somebody throw away or have found in the garbage?

And for real ... some of these people scored BIG TIME. Like big time. Like really big.

Like Refrigerator Big

just ask leslie jones GIF by Saturday Night Live Giphy

"Our current refrigerator is a double-door one with exterior ice and water dispensers. We got it for free, with absolutely no problems whatsoever. It's just a few years old."

"How we got it? My dad (civil engineer) was doing some work on someone's apartment when they said they had bought a new modern French door refrigerator and that they were just going to discard their current refrigerator."

"My dad simply asked if he could have it.. and they said yes." - SauloJr

Immigrants In Action

Dog Brazil GIF Giphy

"I immigrated to the US from Brazil when I was 12. And every Saturday, my mom, stepdad, sister and I would go out at night to upper middle class neighborhoods the day before trash pickup to rummage through the garbage they were putting out."

"We found perfectly good TVs, VCRs, microwaves, couches, lazy boys, tables, books and comics, etc."

"I couldn't believe these Americans were throwing out like that. We furnished our entire house with that stuff. The entire Brazilian immigrant community in my town did it. We were flabbergasted." - PhillipLlerenas

With A Note

Television Bunny GIF Giphy

"My wife yelled at me that someone put a big TV outside with a note on it. Walked across the street and it was a brand new Samsung 37 inch HDTV."

"They were actually renovating the apartment building and got an upgraded TV. Even had the remote taped to it with batteries, I guess I have really nice neighbors here in NYC." - MadLintElf

Life Hack!

studying busy philipps GIF by Drunk History Giphy

"If you want high end stuff out of the garbage for free, follow these steps:"

"Pick a city with a large university in it. If it's a school well known for its law programs, or medical, or engineering, all the better."

"Search for luxury apartment complexes that market themselves towards students. Look for things like included shuttle service, pools, fitness centers, etc. The more expensive and swanky the better."

"Figure out when finals week is at the end of Spring semester."

"Dumpster dive at those luxury apartment complexes during that week and the following weekend."

"Very wealthy international students will arrive in the US, fully outfit an apartment with nice furniture, big TVs, audio systems, gaming consoles, you name it, and when the semester ends they just junk it all because they aren't going to fly it back to wherever, and it's too much effort to spend the time selling when they do not care about the money."

"It's a smaller scale phenomenon a little like all the luxury cars abandoned at the airport in Dubai." - whattothewhonow

Literal Gold Treasure

valley of the boom david kim stanley GIF by National Geographic Channel Giphy

"I found a gold coin at goodwill for 5 bucks. It was in a case with someone's name and company name."

"It was their gift from the company for retiring. I assume the family threw it out when he died not knowing it was solid gold. It was in a in a thick solid plastic case that had to be cracked opened."

"It literally said 1 oz fine gold on it. I figured 5 bucks was worth the risk it not being real."

"It was a South African KRUGERRAND 1 oz coin. Everyone was just too busy to read it lol."

"Bought it and took it too a pawn shop and sold it for a couple grand." - streetmitch

The Best Day Of My Life

Will Smith Wow GIF by 1LIVE Giphy

"When I was a kid, I grew up right outside the Los Angeles area in the suburbs. My stepdad was a garbage truck driver for the city of Beverly Hills."

"I swear in the late 80s and early 90s we'd have so much basically brand new stuff (still in boxes) brought home on a regular basis."

"I'll never forget one day in particular. My stepdad came home and was like 'get ready, come to the car, I'll need your help.' So I go down there and in back seat of his car he had a few large black garbage bags."

"We haul them up to our apartment and he's like 'go ahead, open them.' Inside was what I could only describe as an 80s kids trove of treasures."

"One bag contained just about every Ghostbusters and GI joe toy you can imagine, they were played with but had every little accessory, there was a bunch the playsets and everything."

"In the other bag was pretty much every LEGO of the early 80s sets, still in their original boxes. I was a big LEGO nerd but was totally thrown off by the old school space ones because they looked nothing like the 90s space sets. I think they even said "NASA" the minifig's chests."

"That was like a random day in July, it felt like Christmas. I was 9 years old and it was basically like the best day of my life up to that point." - Zombgief

Who Throws Away Money?

spongebob squarepants money GIF Giphy

"A jar full of quarters."

"Annual spring cleaning projects happen in a lot of towns where anyone can put almost anything on the curb and it's taken away for free. It's to stop open dumping or stuff being dumped in ditches."

"Sometimes people deal with estates from winter by just dumping all their grandfather's stuff on the curb for the cleanup to get the house empty immediately. Most often they don't even bother to look at what they are throwing away."

"In 2012 on north road in Akwesasne I found an estate pile that I shuttled back and forth with my bike trailer getting lots of older tools like a scythe, hammers, saws, screwdrivers and wrenches, a 22 rifle with 100 round of ammo, a bunch of ar15 magazines, cast iron cookware, oil lamps, a hand crank food mill with all kinds of accessories, a black raven axe head (worth $100 easily since they are a collectable), and a quart size mason jar full of change mostly quarters."

"That was spring and the sheriffs office did a gun buyback in the fall where I took the mags and got $20 each for them (30 round mags suddenly illegal under the safe act of fall 2012. The buyback was a local political move). I still got the 22 and picked off a lot of woodchuck with it in my gardens." - Bogtrotterso1980

Filing Fever

Files Workload GIF Giphy

"I own a small company which is located directly in front of a state funded program facility. The state decided to have this office shred all of their files as they were going to switch to electronic data (exclusively)."

"We found two of these old rotary filing cabinets outside of their office. They're worth almost $3k each!"

"They just placed them there and we saw them and asked what they planned on doing with them. They said, 'Hmmm.....either donate them or trash them.' The state told them simply to get rid of them."

"We jumped at this and took the two into our already tiny office because there was no way in hell that we were going to let these gems go. (We do use paper files, unfortunately)."

"They wanted to give us two smaller ones but seriously, our office is very small. I made some phone calls and they were picked up immediately by other office workers/friends." - GlitzBlitz

This Sucks - In A Good Way!

mrs doubtfire vacuum GIF Giphy

"In the 1990s my moms work had a really nice high end Hoover that stopped working. They threw it out."

"My mom took it home because my dad tinkers and repairs things easily. Turns out since it was a bagged vacuum all the dummies had to do is REPLACE THE BAG."

"Like it never occurred to them to do the most easy and basic step. My parents were excited to have a really upgraded vacuum. Maybe like $500ish." - schweddyboobs

Tiffany's Trash

Audrey Hepburn Movie GIF by The Good Films Giphy

"My dad found an old stained glass window laying out by someone's trash. He thought it would look cool hanging in our cabin, so he stopped and grabbed it."

"It sat in our garage for a few years before he looked at it more closely and found "Tiffany and Co." branding on it. He got in touch with some stained glass window dude who figured it was worth about $40k fully restored, so my dad sold it to him for somewhere around $30k." - throwaway_stopdrink

Have you had any awesomely trashtastic treasures? Let us know!

garbage