JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Our topic today is ...

ROBERT: Goodness.

JAD: Goodness, selflessness.

ROBERT: So we've done the math. The math leaves me a little on the cold side.

JAD: [laughs] I wonder why.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: You know what? Forget the math. Forget it.

ROBERT: Let's go to the people who do the deeds.

JAD: People who do amazingly brave and heroic things.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: No math required.

ROBERT: Maybe find out—I don't know ...

JAD: What makes them different than the rest of us.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: That question led us ...

[phone rings]

JAD: Again, this story just began with a simple question. That question led us ...

[phone rings]

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Walter Rutkowski.

JAD: ... to a guy named Walter Rutkowski.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: And I'm the Executive Director and Secretary of the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission.

JAD: Cool, well thanks for doing this.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Okay.

JAD: Can you just give us a little background on the Hero Fund? What is the Carnegie Hero Fund?

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: The Carnegie Hero Fund is a private operating foundation that was established by Andrew Carnegie in 1904. And what we do is recognize civilian heroism throughout the United States and Canada by giving an award called the Carnegie Medal. And accompanying the Carnegie Medal is a financial grant.

JAD: How much?

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Currently the amount is $5,000.

JAD: Wow. And how do you guys choose your heroes?

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: We judge the heroic acts against a list of requirements.

ROBERT: So then you have to have some kind of definition of hero, which includes some and excludes others.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Yes.

JAD: Perfect.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: The basic definition, which is a civilian ...

JAD: One.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Meaning no military. Who voluntarily ...

JAD: Two.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Leaves a point of safety ...

JAD: Three.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: To risk his own life, or her own life ...

JAD: Four.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: To an extraordinary degree ...

JAD: Five.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: To save or to attempt to save the life of another human.

JAD: Six. And how about seven? Why?

ROBERT: Can you—can you read that one more time?

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Okay, I wasn't reading. That just came from memory, so ...

ROBERT: Oh, okay.

JAD: Like, what is it that happens in a person's mind at that pivotal moment, when they decide to voluntarily ...

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Voluntarily ...

JAD: ... leave a point of safety ...

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Leave a point of safety ...

JAD: ... and risk their life to extraordinary degree ...

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: To save the life of another human.

JAD: That's what we wanted to know.

JAD: Should we just jump in?

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Okay.

JAD: So the first one we have on our list is Lora Shrake.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Okay. That's file number 73546 and the award number is 8005.

LORA SHRAKE: I am Lora Shrake. I am from Mattoon, Illinois, and I currently live in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

TIM HOWARD: Oh, wow.

JAD: Laura spoke with our producer Tim Howard.

TIM: Okay, so we're going back a little bit here.

LORA SHRAKE: Yeah, 15 years.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Back in the mid-'90s ...

LORA SHRAKE: 1995.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: She was a 21-year-old college student.

LORA SHRAKE: And I was driving through the country, and I saw a woman getting mauled by a bull in a pasture.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: So she stopped to see what was going on.

LORA SHRAKE: Jumped out and started yelling at her to see what I could do. The woman was on the ground and the bull was ...

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: 950-pound Jersey bull.

LORA SHRAKE: Tossing her in the air and back on the ground.

TIM: Wow!

LORA SHRAKE: She was clearly struggling.

TIM: And where were you?

LORA SHRAKE: I was right on the other side of the fence, but the fence was electric.

JAD: So here is the moment that we find fascinating. At this point Lora can either go forward through thousands of volts of electricity toward an angry bull that will likely maul her too, or she can stay safe.

LORA SHRAKE: I went ahead and just climbed through the fence. And I don't remember ever feeling the electricity.

JAD: She says by the time she got through ...

LORA SHRAKE: Crazily enough ...

JAD: ... a neighbor had shown up and threw her a piece of pipe.

LORA SHRAKE: Maybe about two feet long.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: So she approached the woman.

LORA SHRAKE: Who was still conscious. The whole time she's yelling at me, "Hit the bull in the face as hard as you can and don't stop."

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: So Ms. Shrake went up to the bull and beat it repeatedly with this two-foot length of tubing.

LORA SHRAKE: I think it distracted the bull enough where she was able to get out from under him. And as soon as we were outside the fence looking back into the pasture, the bull was literally right there at the fence.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Kicked the ground a few times and snorted.

LORA SHRAKE: He was not—he was not happy.

JAD: To our question ...

TIM: When you were there at that fence, and you had the choice to either stay put or to go through it, what was going through your mind? Was there a calculation there?

LORA SHRAKE: No, I can't really say that. I mean ...

TIM: Weighing your options or anything like that?

LORA SHRAKE: I did not. No. It was just, here's the problem, here's what I need to do, and something needed to happen.

TIM: Huh. So there was no 'choice' moment?

LORA SHRAKE: Not that I recall, no. If nobody came to this woman's rescue she would die.

JAD: Unfortunately, this is the usual explanation, says Walter. No explanation.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: "I couldn't stand there and not do anything. I was compelled to act."

LORA SHRAKE: I didn't really take the time to think about what else could happen.

WILLIAM PENNEL: I can't say I ever really thought about my own life at that time. I mean ...

JAD: Okay, we just jumped ahead because we thought we'd try again. That's the voice of the next Carnegie hero that Walter told us about.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Yeah, William David Pennel.

WILLIAM PENNEL: My name is William Pennel.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Who was the 8,362nd person to receive the Carnegie Medal.

JAD: Our producer Lynn Levy tracked him down.

LYNN LEVY: Bill, can you hear me?

WILLIAM PENNEL: Yeah, I can hear you.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: William David Pennel was 37 years old at the time of his heroic act.

LYNN: Was it 1999?

WILLIAM PENNEL: Yes. It was early in the morning. It was like ...

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: 3:19 am in a small town near Pittsburgh.

WILLIAM PENNEL: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Monongahela, Pennsylvania.

WILLIAM PENNEL: We was in bed sleeping and ...

[crash]

WILLIAM PENNEL: My wife heard a loud crash. I actually didn't hear it, but the dog—my one dog was carrying on, so right away I run down there.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Mr. Pennel went outside his house. There was a very bad automobile accident. A car crashed head-on into a utility pole.

WILLIAM PENNEL: Flames was, like, rippling up the windshield out from under the hood.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: And he responded to the scene wearing only sweatpants.

WILLIAM PENNEL: No shoes or shirt or nothing on.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Bare-chested and barefoot.

JAD: So here we are. Bill's standing in front of this ball of fire. There are three drunk teenagers inside that car, though he doesn't know it. He can either A) do nothing; or B) go in.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Through the driver's door.

WILLIAM PENNEL: And this big fella slumped out the door. So I reached in and grabbed a hold of him.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Around the chest, pulled him from the driver's seat, out to the ground.

WILLIAM PENNEL: Meantime the car was just, like, blazing. And my neighbor was there, she was hollering, "There's more of them in there!" So I run back to the vehicle ...

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Found that the front-seat passenger was trapped in the wreckage.

WILLIAM PENNEL: I finally got him loose and pulled him out.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Apparently, Mr. Pennel was aware that a third person was in the car, a third young man. Mr. Pennel entered the car a third time. By then ...

WILLIAM PENNEL: There was tires blowing up.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: The flames had grown to about three feet above the car's roof.

WILLIAM PENNEL: The interior, like the headliner of the car and stuff was dripping, like, plastic down on my back. I mean, I'm in there screaming, you know, "Somebody give me a hand in here." But nobody would help. And I reached in and grabbed ahold of the kid that was in the back by the scruff of the neck and pulled him out.

LYNN: All right, so when you were coming out of your house and you were looking at that car, what was going through your head?

WILLIAM PENNEL: Just trying to—try to help. I mean, I did what any normal person would do. I mean, you know, I just kept saying this is somebody's kids, you know what I mean? At the time, my daughter was, like, 16. And I'm saying to myself, you know, if something, God forbid, would ever happen to her, that I would hope someone would be there to help.

LYNN: Did you ever talk to your neighbors and ask them why they didn't come in there?

WILLIAM PENNEL: You know what? That's funny you brought that up, because no, I've never brought it up. Never brought it up.

LYNN: How come?

WILLIAM PENNEL: I don't know. I guess maybe I probably wouldn't like their answer. I don't know. I don't know why I've never asked them that.

LYNN: What do you think is the difference between you and those other people who just sort of stood by?

WILLIAM PENNEL: I couldn't answer that. I couldn't answer that.

JAD: So our bull girl, she didn't know. This guy didn't really know either. Somebody must be able to tell us something about what they were thinking at that moment that allowed them, that gave them the courage to do what they did.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: I can't give you a definite answer as to what propels people to do this, no.

JAD: But we took one more shot with Walter. And he told us about a case that of all the cases he's heard, this is the one that puzzles him the most.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: It's the case of Wesley James Autrey, a construction worker from New York, 50-year-old man, who did jump into the track-bed in a subway station to remove a fellow, young man who had fallen onto the track. The gentleman was six foot, 180 pounds. He was inert. And yet Mr. Autrey persisted despite the fact that the train was coming. There would come a point, at least in my estimation, where you would have to say, "I have to get out of here because I'm going to be killed. I'm not suicidal." But Mr. Autrey didn't think that way. He and I part in this manner. What he did was he lay atop the victim between the rails while the train passed over them. In the farthest reaches of my imagination, I can see myself jumping onto a subway track to attempt to rescue. What I can't see myself doing is lying atop the victim while the train passes over me.

JAD: Making this story even more nuts? When we finally met up with Wesley Autrey on the platform where this incident happened under 35th and Broadway, he explained to us that his daughters had been with him.

WESLEY AUTREY: Everything was okay.

ROBERT: How old were your daughters?

WESLEY AUTREY: At that time, my daughters was four and six. And this is them there.

JAD: Showed us a picture.

ROBERT: Oh my God!

JAD: Super cute.

WESLEY AUTREY: The one behind me is Suki and this is the baby Sashi.

JAD: So when they're standing there and this guy starts convulsing and then eventually falls off the platform onto the tracks right as the train is coming, his choice is pretty stark. In order to save this complete stranger, he's got to leave his daughters behind, potentially without a dad.

WESLEY AUTREY: Because I'm looking at him shaking and going into another seizure. For some strange reason a voice out of nowhere said, "Don't worry about your own, don't worry about your daughters. You can do this."

JAD: So he jumps. Runs to the guy.

ROBERT: Is he conscious?

WESLEY AUTREY: No. No.

JAD: Tries to grab the guy's hand.

WESLEY AUTREY: And each time I grabbed his hand we slip apart, you know? We slip, I look up, the train is getting closer. I grab his hand again, we slip apart. The train gets closer.

JAD: 50 feet, 20 feet, 10 feet. And then it's right there. And all he can do is grab the guy, get him in a bear hug, and flatten his body against the guy as much as he can.

WESLEY AUTREY: The first train car just grazed my calves.

ROBERT: Oh my God!

JAD: Train car went right over them.

WESLEY AUTREY: And when the train came to a stop, four to five cars passed over us. I looked him in the eye and said, "Excuse me. You seemed to have a seizure or something. I don't know you, you don't know me." So I just kept talking to him until he came through. And he was like, "Well, where are we?" And I'm like, "We are underneath a train." And he said, "Well, who are you?" And I said, "I came down to save your life." So he kept asking me, "Are we dead? Are we in heaven?" I gave him a slight pinch on his arm, he said, "Ouch." And I said, "See? you are very much alive."

ROBERT: Have you—did you ever ask yourself at this point, like, "What am I doing here?" I mean, he asked you, "What am I doing here," but what about you?

WESLEY AUTREY: Well I could hear the two ladies who had my daughters standing there with them in between their legs. I can hear my daughters screaming. So when that train come to a stop, I yelled up from underneath the train, "Excuse me, I'm their father. We are okay. I just want to let my daughters know that I'm okay, because I know that they are worried about me." Everybody started clapping.

JAD: Can I ask you a question? So the point at which you said you heard a voice ...

WESLEY AUTREY: Yes.

JAD: ... that said, "I can do this."

WESLEY AUTREY: I can do this.

JAD: What—what is amazing to me is that you left your daughters right here and dived after a guy you don't know.

WESLEY AUTREY: He was a stranger, total stranger. But you know what? The mission wasn't completed. I was chose for that.

JAD: You felt chose—like you were ...

WESLEY AUTREY: I felt chosen. I felt like I was the chosen one.

JAD: Wow.

ROBERT: But for a religious person though, I would wonder, "Why me?"

WESLEY AUTREY: Well, you know what? Maybe 20 years ago, I was supposed to be at a certain point ...

JAD: And then he explained to us exactly why he had jumped. He was the one guy who could. He said right before his feet left the platform, this one specific moment from his life flashed to mind.

WESLEY AUTREY: This thing that happened, you know? I had a gun pulled to my temple, but you know, it was a misfire, so, you know?

ROBERT: A gun was put to your head and mis—so you were almost dead for a second or two.

WESLEY AUTREY: I was almost dead, you know?

ROBERT: Oh, so you think you might have been spared for a purpose.

WESLEY AUTREY: I was spared for a reason.

JAD: After that moment he says when the gun went click and he didn't die, he always wondered why had God spared him that moment, until he was on the platform and he saw the guy fall off. He says then he knew this is why.

WESLEY AUTREY: I can do this.

JAD: It was just, "I can do this?"

WESLEY AUTREY: I can do this. That voice, when that voice said that you're going to be okay, I knew everything was gonna work out.

ROBERT: You know what I think at the end of the day?

JAD: What's that?

ROBERT: I don't think that there's an answer to the question we asked. I don't think ...

JAD: The hero question?

ROBERT: Why were you a hero? I don't think that any three of these heroes—I mean, the last one had the longest explanation. He had been selected for some purpose, but does he know why he was chosen? Not a clue.

JAD: See I—guy number three gives me something.

ROBERT: What does he give you?

JAD: Okay, so the first two, right? They have no idea.

ROBERT: None.

JAD: So there was just something in them that made them act. But guy number three is talking about circumstances. Like, the world prepared him for that moment. Serendipity. So it makes me think, well, what if circumstances are just right, maybe any of us could do that?

WILLIAM PENNEL: I got—I got a mailman and he used to say to me all the time, he says, "How did you manage to do that up there? How did you manage to pull them kids out? I don't know if I could have done that." I said, "Well, you know what? Don't say you wouldn't do this or you wouldn't do that 'til you're put in that situation."

JAD: In fact, when we asked Walter ...

JAD: How many nominations do you get a year? Are they hard to find?

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: No, they are not hard at all to find. We are fortunate to be living in a society, regardless of what you hear elsewhere, we are fortunate to be living in a society where people do look out for others, even strangers.

JAD: He told us they'd even had to up their guidelines to make it harder to win.

WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Simply because of the vast number for heroic deeds that happen in day-to-day life.

[WALTER RUTKOWSKI: Hi. This is Walter Rutkowski. Support for NPR comes from NPR station and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.]

[WESLEY AUTRY: Dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live healthy, productive lives.]

[WALTER RUTKOWSKI: At GatesFoundation.org.]

[LORA SHRAKE: Hi, this is Lora Shrake. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, supporting unconventional approaches to transform health and healthcare.]

[WALTER RUTKOWSKI: At RWJF.org/pioneer. And the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information at MacFound.org. This is NPR. Okay, that was the best I can do.]

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