Sometimes it can be pretty amazing how one small decision can have a huge impact.
Mike Jaffe knows about that.
Mike was usually on his way to work in the morning when his wife, Sabrina, woke up their one year old daughter. He was also on his way home from work when Sabrina was putting her to bed.
But one Monday morning, he decided that the next day, Tuesday, he would go in to work late so that they could all have breakfast together.
On Tuesday morning, he was having second thoughts. This job was important to him. But he decided to stick to the plan, and they had a nice family breakfast together that morning.
That breakfast saved Mike’s life.
He worked on the 96th floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower, and that Tuesday morning breakfast was September 11, 2001. Hundreds of his colleagues were already at work and did not survive.
My guest today is Hannah. She was driving one day over a small bridge, on her way to meet someone, and just by chance looked over at the water below.
That quick glance ended up having a life-changing impact.
If you’d like to contact Hannah, she’s in the WWTL Facebook group:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook
Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/236
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
Sometimes it can be pretty amazing how one small decision can have a huge impact.
Mike Jaffe knows about that.
Mike was usually on his way to work in the morning when his wife, Sabrina, woke up their one year old daughter. He was also on his way home from work when Sabrina was putting her to bed.
But one Monday morning, he decided that the next day, Tuesday, he would go in to work late so that they could all have breakfast together.
On Tuesday morning, he was having second thoughts. This job was important to him. But he decided to stick to the plan, and they had a nice family breakfast together that morning.
That breakfast saved Mike’s life.
He worked on the 96th floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower, and that Tuesday morning breakfast was on September 11, 2001. Hundreds of his colleagues were already at work and did not survive.
My guest today is Hannah. She was driving one day over a small bridge, on her way to meet someone, and just by chance looked over at the water below.
That quick glance ended up having a life-changing impact.
Scott
This happened in March and it’s in Maine. How cold was it that day?
Hannah
Air temperature wise– I’m not exactly sure what the temp was that day, but I think it was around the mid-50s if I remember correctly. I don’t remember exactly how warm the air was itself. It was just starting to warm up for the season.
Scott
Yeah, the worst of winter was over anyway. I know this was on a Friday, and we got to talk about what kind of led up to this incident. Part of it is you were training for a marathon.
Hannah
Yes, the day started just like any other day. I typically work on Fridays in the afternoon and have my mornings free. So, I usually do one of my longer runs for the week that day and prepare for a marathon. My distances were getting a little longer as training– the marathon was in May. I dropped my son off at school and I was driving home. All these little things may seem irrelevant but, in the grand scheme of the picture, I think it all played a factor. I dropped my son off at school and I was driving home. I only live about 2.5 miles from the school. I turned onto my road and there were a couple big fields. I was driving down the road and something caught my eye in the field and I was like, “That’s a giant bald eagle sitting in the field.” I actually looked in my rear view mirror. There were no cars behind me or anything, and I backed up and I sat there for a few minutes recording this huge eagle just sitting in the field because you see them flying around sometimes, but I hadn’t seen one just sitting there stalking field mice or whatever before, and it really caught my eye.
So I go home and I’m preparing for a run, but I’m kind of dilly-dallying around the house. I was on social media and I noticed that it was a friend of mine’s birthday that day, which I hadn’t made that connection– she has a very strong connection with bald eagles. I sent her the video and I was like, “No wonder why I saw this big eagle today. It’s your birthday! Thinking about you.” So I sent that text and I was a little distracted. Then, I got ready to set out for my run. When I’m training for a big race, I follow a running plan on my watch. It sets up what the distances are, if I should be at a slower pace, or if I’m going to add sprints or this or that. This particular run that day gave me an estimated distance of what I was going to run, but not exact because there were sprints involved. So if you’re sprinting for a third of a mile– it depends how fast you’re sprinting, how much you’re going to cover, or if it’s a timed thing like sprinting for a minute, rest for a minute. I didn’t know the exact distance, but I knew an estimated distance. On Fridays, also, before going to work in the afternoon, I meet a couple friends at the gym and provide a little personal training to them. So that was my plan for the afternoon before going into work.
I set out for my run, I was estimating it was going to be around nine-ish miles. It actually ended up being a little over 10, so it kind of set my plan for the afternoon a little later than expected. I got home, I shot my friends a text, and I was like, “Hey, I’m running a few minutes behind. I’ll meet you at the gym at 1.15.” I think the original plan was to meet them at 1. I’m like, “It’ll probably be around 1.15.” And they’re like, “That’s fine.” I got in the shower, got ready, packed my clothes for work later, and set off. By the time I actually got out the door, I was running even later than I told them I was running.
I typically take one route when I go to Damariscotta. It’s the route I’m more familiar with – it drives you through the town of Damariscotta. But because I was running late, if I drive through Jefferson – the route that I happen to be taking that day – it shaves off, like, 1-2 minutes if I’m going to the YMCA where I was planning on meeting them. I decided to take that other route that day just merely because I’m like, “Ugh, I’m running behind. I already told them I’m going to be late. I don’t want to have to text them and tell them I’m going to be even later.”
Scott
You say these towns in Maine, Damariscotta, and Jefferson. It’s funny because you and I know these towns because that’s where I used to live – right in that area – and it’s kind of a weird thing. I think you said you live in Whitefield, right?
Hannah
I live in Whitefield, yeah. Yes.
Scott
I had a PO Box in Whitefield. I worked in Whitefield for several years. It’s just an interesting coincidence that, yeah, this thing happened right where I used to live.
Hannah
Yeah, I love that too because listening to your podcast– I got it recommended from listening to another podcast. The first time I heard you mention Maine or Moody’s Diner, I was like, wait a minute, this makes me love it even more. So, it gave me that more invested interest. But yeah, I decided to go through Jefferson and, that day, the sun was shining. It was starting to feel like spring, and it was really noticeably starting to feel like spring. I remember running outside. It felt really good. I had thrown on an extra sweatshirt to head to the gym but, otherwise, wasn’t overly bundled up that day. I was driving, getting to Jefferson.
I work at a restaurant and we have a lot of seasonal customers and I know one of our seasonal customers lives in Jefferson right before where this all took place. I remember driving by their road, kind of rubbernecking, driving down the driveway saying, “Oh, these people should be opening up their summer house soon.” I always look forward to seeing them every year, and then look ahead. It’s so beautiful. Beautifully sunny. I actually observed the speed limit sign, which I always drive slowly through there but, for some reason that day, I remember observing the speed limit sign, slowing down a little bit, then coming to the bridge, and I need to pause this story for just a second to explain bridges In my life. Ever since I was a little kid, I had nightmares about bridges. In these dreams, I would be driving over a bridge and then half the bridge would be missing or there would be something wrong with the bridge, or I was climbing on the underside of a bridge – just constant nightmares throughout my life. So I always had this fear of bridges – I always have.
Scott
Was there anything that actually happened that caused that fear or it just came out of nowhere?
Hannah
Nothing that I remember happening. I remember them intensifying with– and I don’t know if you lived in Maine at the time but, when they were replacing the Bath bridge, I was a child.
Scott
No, I don’t remember that.
Hannah
When you drive through Bath now, they still have the original Bath Bridge, but it used to be a drawbridge – the middle of the bridge would open up. The iron works are right there. So every time they had a big boat go in or out, they’d have to open up the drawbridge and then, sometimes, it would get stuck open and that’s the main road through there and stuff. So they’ve replaced that bridge. But as they were doing construction, it looked pretty gnarly. There was half a bridge that they’re constructing while you’re driving on one bridge and that other old bridge is still there because it has train trellises underneath it. I think that’s the reason why they haven’t been able to take it away. I remember them intensifying there then, but they’ve continued throughout my whole life.
To take it back to this day, I am driving through Jefferson and – it’s a tiny little bridge – I get to the bridge and I always grip my steering wheel a little tighter when I drive over bridges. I looked over towards the water and I was thinking, “Wow, the ice is really going out.” That kind of represents how cold it still was – how cold the water still was. That Damariscotta Lake still had ice on part of it. But in this particular part that they refer to as Davis Stream that comes off Jefferson Lake, it had all melted. I am driving over the bridge and I look out, “Oh, the ice is going out.” And then I see the tail end of a vehicle sticking out of the water. That is a very hard image to wrap your brain around.
Scott
Yeah, it doesn’t make sense.
Hannah
No, and that was my thought – that doesn’t make sense. There’s a boat launch right there, so my very quick initial thought was like, “Oh shit, that boat launch went bad.” And then I’m like, “Eh, there’s still ice on the water. There’s no boat. That’s the back end of the car. There’s no boat trailer on it.” That was all, like, a split second thought. I pulled over after the bridge and I jump out of my car and I run over and I notice that there are three people standing across on the opposite shore. I’m so confused. I yelled over to them, “Is there somebody in that car?” They’re speaking back to me, but I can’t tell what they’re saying. I don’t see any urgency in anybody. I don’t see any panic or urgency, so I’m so confused by the situation. I just kept repeating myself, “Is there somebody in that car? Is there somebody in that car?” And finally, “I hear yes.” And I was like, “Wait a minute. What?”
“Yes. There’s somebody in that car. Yes.”
So I rip off my sweatshirt, kick off my shoes, throw my keys and my phone, everything that was in my hand at the time. I throw it down and I jump into the water. I remember yelling to them, “Are you on the phone with 911?” My eyes weren’t fixated on them and what they were doing. I was more focused on the vehicle, of course, and very confused by the situation. How did the people know there was somebody in the car? Were they there to witness it? When did this happen? Why wasn’t emergency like EMS there yet?” I didn’t know so many unanswered questions, but I jumped in the water without thinking about all that.
Scott
How good of a swimmer are you?
Hannah
That’s a complicated thing. I grew up on Damariscotta Lake. I grew up swimming, and felt like a confident swimmer when I was a child. Then, ironically enough, a couple years ago, I signed up to do a triathlon. I’m a very impulsive person and I get hyper fixated on things. I got this notion, I got this idea that I wanted to do a triathlon, and I became obsessed with it, so I signed up for a half Ironman happening in the area. I was a strong runner. I ended up buying a bike. I was like, “Oh, I grew up riding a bike. I can ride a bike.” Bought a bike, fell in love with biking, and I thought the swim was going to be a shoo-in. I grew up on Damariscotta Lake. I grew up swimming all the time, and I was quickly humbled by swimming once I started training for that triathlon.
When training for that triathlon, I was going very early in the morning to, basically, this location right around the corner to swim in the morning before the world woke up. I’d park outside the gate of the local park there and I’d go and swim. I would be frustrated that I was out of breath and I was slow, and I couldn’t understand why swimming was so hard. I was a cardio junkie. I could run forever, I could do everything, and swimming was very humbling. But because of all that training, I knew I could swim long distances. I knew, even though I wasn’t fast, I was a strong enough swimmer. There wasn’t a safety issue with me not being able to swim minus the water temperature is how I felt.
Scott
How long was the swim to the car?
Hannah
It wasn’t far. I don’t know the exact distance, but I want to say 30 feet maybe.
Scott
Do you know how deep the water was?
Hannah
I found out later that it is between 20 and 30 feet deep right there.
Scott
That car that’s going down is going to go way down.
Hannah
Yes, yeah. I jump in the water without thinking about it. I didn’t question my own safety at the time. That wasn’t even a thought in my head. I’m a mom. I always get emotional when I think about this part because I remember looking at the vehicle and my initial thought was, “This is probably an older gentleman that had a medical emergency.” That was my initial thought. But then I was thinking, “But what if it’s a mom with a little kid in the car?” I have a then 6-year-old son. He’s 7 now. But I’m like, “What if it’s a mom who just picked their kid up from school and it’s them?” I also have a now 21-year-old daughter. I’m like, “What if it’s a teenage kid that just left high school?” All these thoughts were in my head – like, “Who is this? Somebody loves this person that’s trapped in this car right now.”
I swim to the car not thinking about my own safety and not thinking about, once I reach the car, really, what I’m going to do, because I had this thought. As I reach the car, I’m like, “What if this person is already deceased? What is this going to look like? How am I going to get this person to shore? Or what if this person is alive but unconscious? How am I going to swim to shore holding them?” I’m thinking about, “Do I put them on my back?” My thought was that I was easily going to get this person out of the vehicle and then how I was going to get them to shore after that point. But I didn’t know what I was facing. I couldn’t see in the windows or anything. The back windows were exposed at that point, but the car was dropping pretty quickly.
Scott
This was what you were thinking though, almost seems like the perfect response because you didn’t know what you were going to see when you got there, but you knew the first thing is you had to get there and, whatever you find then, you can deal with it and come up with a plan at that point. But when you got to the car, how much of it was still visible above the water?
Hannah
I would say from the passenger side door back minus the tires – of course those were completely submerged. It wasn’t completely upended, it was kind of at an angle. I think a portion of the driver’s side window was still exposed. It’s hard to remember because it all happened so fast. But my initial thing, when I got up to it, I went to the door and tried to open the handle.
Scott
Which side? Driver or passenger door?
Hannah
Driver’s side. It was locked but, as I got up there, I heard banging on the window and, at that moment, I was like, “Oh, this person is alive and they’re conscious, so now all we have to do is get them out of the vehicle.” That took a lot of relief, a lot of, “Okay, now we just have to get this person out of the vehicle. I know they’re fine. It’s not someone who’s unconscious that had to be rescued or brought to shore.”
Scott
Could you see inside the car at that point?
Hannah
I couldn’t. I couldn’t see anything inside the vehicle. The front windows were underwater. The back windows– I don’t know if it was because it was sunny where I was and darker in the vehicle that I couldn’t see in, but I couldn’t see anything. I quickly swam over to the other side – the passenger side of the vehicle – and tried the other exposed door thinking maybe that door’s unlocked. That’s where the thinking wasn’t clear that I could just open the door. And realistically, even if they weren’t locked, because of the water pressure against the vehicle, the doors wouldn’t have opened anyway. But that’s all stuff that unfolds afterwards.
Scott
And were you able to communicate with this person at all in any way?
Hannah
At this point, no, but they’re knocking from the inside and I’m knocking from the outside. My thought was, “I’ll just break the window with my fist.” So I start pounding on the window as hard as I can, and they’re pounding from the inside and nothing’s happening. At that point, it’s getting cold. I’m becoming out of breath just because of how cold the water was. I didn’t feel the coldness on my skin, but my breath was literally being taken away. I start scanning the shore and there’s more people coming down and I’m yelling to them, “We need something to break the window.” I’m trying to get the words out, but it was hard. “We need something to break the window. We need something to break the window.” A young man sprang into action and went and grabbed something. At that moment, I actually had to swim back to shore because I couldn’t breathe anymore. That man jumped in the water and he swam out to the vehicle. At that point, the rear door windows were mostly underwater. Behind the rear door window was like a little trunk window, so not the rear trunk itself, but behind the door window was a little tiny window.
Scott
Is this an SUV?
Hannah
Yes. Yep. It was, like, a Ford Explorer maybe.
Scott
So the side windows in the cargo area is what you’re talking about?
Hannah
Yeah. He had brought a tool into the water and he broke that window and that window was too small for anybody to fit out of, but it gave us the ability to talk to the person that was in the vehicle. He broke the window and he actually had to swim. He swam to the front of the car because he was very cold. He was very shocked by the temperature of the water and he was kind of holding onto the vehicle. I remember looking and he was holding onto the vehicle like Rose and Jack in the Titanic, just like floating on it, and he had to swim back into shore almost immediately.
I was gearing up to go back into the water. This was all a matter of a minute, basically. I yelled to the vehicle, “Are you completely filled with water inside?” because I didn’t know if the car had created an air pocket. Even though the car was going down, I didn’t know if maybe he was protected from some of the water. I didn’t know what was happening inside the vehicle itself. He yelled back, “Yes, I’m completely in the water. I need to get out of here.” I met the young man who had jumped in. He was coming back to shore. I met him in the water, took the tool out of his hand and swam back to the vehicle.
Scott
What was the tool he was using to break the window?
Hannah
It was a long handled socket wrench.
Scott
So now you have that and you are swimming back to the vehicle?
Hannah
Yes.
Scott
Okay. Let me just ask you this. When you communicated with the person and he said the car is filled with water, what did you hear in his voice? Was it just, “I just need to get out of here?” Was it desperation or fear? What did you interpret there?
Hannah
I try to gauge the tone. He almost, as a matter of fact, didn’t sound panicked. It wasn’t an outcry. It was more a matter of fact, “Yes, it’s filled with water. I need to get out of here.” But it wasn’t like a desperate cry or anything, if that makes sense.
Scott
I would think the one window now being broken would mean that the car is probably filling with water more quickly.
Hannah
Yes. So that posed the issue. I mean, there was already an issue there, but that smaller window being broken gave the water a faster avenue to fill the vehicle. So in the amount of time – the minute or 30 seconds – it took me to swim back out to the car, it had significantly gone deeper into the water with barely any showing left. So I swam up to the car. At this point, the gentleman in the car, his face is exposed above the water and there is maybe a one foot gap between the rear windshield and the water level where he is.
I yell to him, “I’m going to break that back windshield.” I don’t want to push it. I didn’t want to break the glass into his face or hit him with the tool as I was breaking the back windshield. I didn’t know how easy it would be to hit it and it went all the way through, or if it was going to take a little bit– but I hit it and the windshield shattered without breaking. It shattered in place, so I hit it again, and then I started scooping the glass out by hand so it wouldn’t be pushed into his face.
I started breaking the glass away and this is where it – the thoughts of the incident – gets very haunting. I broke the glass away so it wouldn’t be pushed in his face and his hand reached out that back windshield as the vehicle is starting to now even more rapidly disappear. His hand reaches out and I go to grab his hand and the whole carcass is sucked underwater with him in it, and I start freaking out. I am in hysterics. I start screaming “NO” at the top of my lungs. I’m panicked. I’m trying to assess, “Do I dive under? How deep is it? Do I dive under? Can I swim into the vehicle?” The water’s so dark at that point. I can’t see where it went.
At that point, at that moment of panic, there is a woman on the shore where I entered, and she is telling me that the first responders are starting to show up. I see the firetrucks, I see the first responders are here, and I’m just yelling, “They need to be here faster. They need to be here faster!” I’m just screaming. It was a moment of absolute terror and I think that I did something wrong because I’m like, “The First responders are here. If I hadn’t meddled, this person I’m trying to save, I literally killed him,” was my thought. I killed this person. I was trying to save his life and now he has drowned because of me. It was truly the scariest moment of my life. And
As I panic, I’m scanning the water, I’m looking down in, like, “Can I swim into this car?” I see the glow of his flesh coming towards me from underneath the water. I’m like, “There he is. There he is.” I go over to where I can see him and I grab him behind the arm and he pops his head out of the water, and my fitness coaching reel of encouragement just starts spewing out of my mouth, and I’m like, “You got this. You got this. We’re almost there. We’re just a little while longer. We’re almost there. We’re going to make it. We’re going to make it.”
Just as we’re both crawling onto the shore, all the first responders start popping out of the vehicles and running down to the shore. “Is there anybody else in the water? Is there anybody else in the water?” And we’re like, “No.” He gets whisked off to one direction and I get whisked off to another direction. We are both alive and safe, and the car is at the bottom of the river, but no people are.
Scott
I already knew how this story played out, and I just breathed a big sigh of relief.
Hannah
The only way that I compare it to is, if you have watched a suspenseful movie and you’ve watched it before and you know exactly how it’s going to end, but every time you watch that movie, you’re like at the grip of the seat. What if the movie changes? What if it changed since the last time I watched it? What if the person doesn’t make it out? I replayed that moment so many times over and over, and I had to keep telling myself, “He’s alive. They’re fine. I know how it ends. We’re fine.” But that moment literally kept me up at night, haunting me.
Scott
Yeah, if a movie was made about this, that’s exactly how it would’ve been scripted, because the viewer thinks, “Oh, they’re gone now” but then, last minute, “Oh, they got saved.”
Hannah
Yep. It was just like that. It was petrifying.
Scott
You guys got taken separate directions. Did you need medical assistance at all?
Hannah
Not at the moment. He got taken to the hospital and they put me in a warm fire truck and with EMTs. The ironic or funny part of all of this is that I work at a restaurant and a lot of the first responders are customers of the restaurant, so I knew a lot of them. The man who came in to do my vitals and stuff just looked at me and kind of shook his head, and I was like– little different context than you usually see me. They had been trying to get me to join the volunteer fire department in that town for a while.
Scott
I think you just qualified for that, right?
Hannah
I know. But the other part is my daughter had gotten hired at the beginning of the year to become a 911 dispatcher for Lincoln County, the same county where this took place in, and it’s months and months of training. She was still in the training aspect of it, but I texted her after the event and I was like, “If you hear my name come across the call list, don’t be alarmed.” And she immediately was like, “What? What happened?” Anyway, you asked if I needed medical intervention. No, they checked my vitals. The biggest injury I had suffered at the time were little microscopic cuts up and down my arm from scooping the glass away from the window. I had all these little tiny cuts on my arm. I was cold. Obviously, the water temperature was about 36 degrees that day. The lake still had ice on portions of it, so it took a while to warm up afterwards. My blood pressure was fine and all that. They tried to encourage me to go to the hospital and I declined.
Scott
Yeah. So, no physical injuries, but this was a traumatic thing for you though.
Hannah
Yeah. Later on, I ended up coming down with pneumonia because of it. I took it back to the marathon training. A couple days after the event, I was at home and I walked up the stairs to my bedroom and I was completely out of breath walking upstairs, and I was like, “This isn’t right. I’ve been running 40 plus miles a week. How can I not even walk up my stairs?” And I had this cough and this really tightness. I noticed it that day. My lungs just felt like the worst case of cardio lungs that I had ever experienced. They just felt like they were on fire. That feeling hadn’t really gone away – it got a little better. But then, once the pain started going away a little bit, I realized that they were inflamed and that I couldn’t breathe at all.
Scott
You had some lake water in your lungs, it sounds.
Hannah
Yeah, aspiration pneumonia is what they ended up diagnosing it as. They gave me steroids and antibiotics and an inhaler and it cleared it up.
Scott
Now, I understand, that same evening, you actually went to work.
Hannah
Yeah. That was the strange part of all of it – I didn’t understand or the magnitude of the situation hadn’t really sunk in. The friends that I was supposed to meet at the gym, I ended up texting them and being like, “I’m not going to make it to the gym. Long story.” We usually would go to the gym and then go grab a bite to eat or something, and then I would go to work and I was like, “If you guys end up still going out for a bite to eat after the gym, I’ll meet you and explain what happened.”
Scott
And they had a story coming that they would not have expected.
Hannah
I went home, took a hot shower, and got dressed. I was still pretty cold. I remember taking my temperature a few times and it was pretty low. I was trying to drink hot fluids and I really bundled up. I met them in town and I had no appetite. I explained to them what happened and I started crying.
I told you that I had texted my daughter, “If you hear my name–” but I also called my husband and he works for the state and state government. I don’t call him when he is at work. In the office, he’s not supposed to take personal phone calls. He’s often in meetings and stuff. I called him, which is something I never do. He answered. He was like, “What’s going on?” I was like, well, still not understanding the magnitude of it all– I’m like, “Well, jumping in, freezing cold water to rescue somebody from a sinking car wasn’t on my bingo card today, but that just happened.” And he was like, “What?” I made light of the situation because it still hadn’t sunk in. Knowing that the man was okay, I was very relieved, but I also had this very guilty conscience that I did something wrong. That’s what I was really holding onto and focusing on, taking it back to going into work that evening.
I had also texted my best friend who I have helped encourage in her fitness journey. I always preach functional fitness. On the side, I do personal training or I teach group exercise and I always talk about functional fitness in my exercise class, like people squatting. I always want them to squat to depth. I talk about watching my grandmother when she got older before she passed away, not being able to just stand up from the couch or stand up from the chair, having to rock or get leverage to get out of a chair. So, it’s something I preach all the time. So I texted my friend and I go, “I know I’m always preaching fun, functional fitness for our own longevity, but my functional fitness helped save somebody’s life today.” Her husband is the fire chief for Newcastle.
I go to work. I am immediately starting to realize that I’m pretty dazed and my mind is just spiraling with what happened, and I didn’t want to talk about it because I still had this guilt that I did something wrong, and I was still trying to process what happened. I knew the man was alive, but I didn’t know if he was at the hospital and if he was staying at the hospital, if he had any long-term effects from it, or short-term effects. I didn’t know any of that. I had a really hard time with the narrative that I saved somebody’s life, and I would not say that for the longest time. I felt guilty that I got in the way of the first responders. “But the first responders weren’t there.” That’s what kept going in my mind.
So I get to work and I tell my coworker, I was like, “I don’t want to go into details. I don’t really want to talk about it too much.” But I gave her a very Reader’s Digest version of what happened on my way in, and I told the manager that was working that evening as well, and I was bartending that night. I’m also a manager of the restaurant, but I have floor shifts as well. So, I happened to be bartending that evening, which meant I had to be very “peopley”. As the time went on, I was like, I’m not “peopley” today. A couple things that had stood out was I had this couple come in who also live in Jefferson and very talkative, very nice people, and I’m always usually pretty chatty with them. The wife was telling me the story about– we got talking about desk jobs or previous employment, and she was like, “Yeah, they just kept giving me more work and I was drowning. I was drowning in it. They just kept piling it on and I was drowning.” My coworker who I had told a little bit of the story looked at me and I’m just like, “Wrong thing to talk about right now.” I was feeling a little triggered. So I was kind of trying to put on a face, but I wasn’t even really able to comprehend what she was saying or talking about. I just was focusing on drowning.
Later on, right after the rescue happened. Lincoln County News – the local newspaper – had shown up. As I was about to drive home, one of the reporters stopped me. It turns out that the woman who had been on the shore that let me know that the first responders were arriving was one of the owners of the newspaper. She had been eating lunch at the Jefferson Market, which is right by the bridge when they heard the commotion. So, she had run over to the shore. So they had a reporter on scene. Almost immediately, the reporter was like, “Can I ask you a few questions?” At the moment, I was like, “I guess so. But get into my car with me so I can blast the heat. I need the heated seats right now.” So she asked me a couple questions and then I went home. But because of that, the Lincoln County News had an article at least online before the end of the day and I was still at work.
Before they posted one with my name and such in it, I guess the word had gotten out that they were looking for a vehicle that had gone under. They were trying to find the vehicle itself so they could drag it out of the water and there were two women sitting at the bar, also regular customers who were like, “Oh yeah, some vehicle drove off the bridge or drove into the water in Jefferson and somebody jumped,” started talking about it. I didn’t even hear them say it, but my coworker was like, “Don’t talk about it right now. Hannah was involved.” And they’re like, “Oh, really?” She kind of gave them a heads up so I didn’t hear it.
My best friend that I had texted about functional fitness, whose husband is the fire chief, came in towards the end of the night and helped put my mind at ease. He came in and gave me a big hug and I was like, “Can I ask you a question?” And he was like, yeah. I was like, “What would’ve that rescue looked like had I not gotten involved? If that car was still there and nobody had jumped in, what would the rescue have looked like for you guys?” And he goes, “That’s the thing about those. A lot of those times, they become retrievals and not rescues because, as first responders, we are taught that we are not allowed to do anything unsafe. When we show up at the scene, we have to get on all our wetsuits and we have to tie up ropes to each other and we have to check and check again. I like to think that we do everything very quickly and we do it as quickly as possible, but that does all take time. As a first responder, we cannot do anything unsafe. We can’t just jump in the water and go do that. We’re not allowed to. So often, the success stories are from Good Samaritans who are able to do that without taking the safety protocols basically.” And I was like, “I can’t help but just keep thinking that I did something wrong, that I got in the way of the paramedics.” And he goes, “That man’s alive because of you. You can’t think about the ifs, ands, or buts because he’s alive.”
Scott
And you did that instinctively.
Hannah
Yeah. Yep.
Scott
That’s amazing. I always think, when I go out to eat at a restaurant and we’re just having dinner or whatever or lunch and I see the servers and the bartenders, the thought always goes through my mind, “I could never do this job” because you have to remember all the different tables you’re working with the different customers, and you walk by a table and somebody says, “Oh, can I get some ketchup?” You got to remember that. All of that has to stay in your mind. I could never keep track of all those things, and you are having to do that on the day that you went through this traumatic experience. I don’t know how you could possibly do that.
Hannah
Yeah, I don’t know. I’m sure some people left not receiving their ketchup that night.
Scott
It would be interesting to compare your tips for that day from some other average day. Maybe you were not functioning at optimal levels there or something. I have to ask you about this. Who was the man and what happened that caused him to go into the water? And when did you realize this?
Hannah
Yes. The man was 59 years old, nearly 60, and he was a retired firefighter from the Cape Cod area. He had been in that field for about 45 years. He started as a junior firefighter and then worked his way up to the fire chief of his department, and was that for his company until he retired just the previous August. They – him and his wife – retired to Waldoboro, Maine.
A big part of the story, which I was very hesitant to share and which added another aspect to the healing process of processing this event was that moment when that smaller window was broken in the vehicle and I swam back up and spoke to him before breaking the back window, just saying, “Stay clear. I’m going to break this window and we’re going to get you out of here.” I looked in the vehicle and, as his face was showing up above the water, the only other thing I could see was floating alcohol bottles floating around his face on the surface of the water in the vehicle, and it kind of gave me a gut punch. I was like, “Ugh, that’s unfortunate.” But that being said, could have been a bag of returnables that busted open. A bag of returnables in the trunk of somebody’s car is not an uncommon thing. I tried not to jump to conclusions about it, but when I was getting checked out by the first responders and the investigating deputy had poked his head in to see how I was doing, I did say to them, “Hey, I just want to give you a heads up. This is what I saw before the car went under, not accusing anybody of anything. I just wanted to make that observation there.”
After the wife of the gentleman started posting in their town Waldoboro Facebook group – most small towns around here have– we have a town of Whitefield and people post about what’s going on in town. There was a town of Waldoboro Facebook group, and she had been posting in it, but I wasn’t part of the group. She wanted to know who it was, that she wanted to get in contact with me, basically, and people were tagging my name in it but, because I wasn’t part of the group, I wasn’t seeing the tags. Somebody who knew me in the group took a screenshot of the post and actually sent it to me and was like, “Hey, this is the wife of the gentleman and she’s trying to get ahold of you.”
I contacted her. She had asked for me to friend her on Facebook, I guess, in one of the posts. “If you can find her, tell her to friend me.” And somebody had tagged her and she didn’t request me as a friend, which I was like, “Well, somebody tagged my name. She could have.” So I was like, “But not everybody knows how that works or whatever.” So I friended her and I didn’t reach out and send a message or anything. I merely sent the friend request because I still didn’t know what I was thinking about the whole time. I didn’t know if they were going to be mad at me for interfering with first responders. I still had that narrative playing through my brain, so I was like, “They might be mad at me. I got in the way. I didn’t just wait for the firemen to come do their job. I got in the way.” I friended her, but I didn’t reach out.
A few hours later, she sent me the longest, sweetest, heartfelt message. I believe this was a day or two after the rescue. It wasn’t that same day – it was a couple days. As the article came out in the Lincoln County News and my name was exposed, people who knew me and saw the post got us connected. But she sent me the most heartfelt message and we chatted back and forth and she talked about me being a guardian angel, and that I was placed there to help them and there won’t be a day that will go by and how he’s feeling very remorseful. I talked with her and I could tell in her tone – it was the unspoken thing – that he was feeling very remorseful. But I still, to this day, talk with her here and there frequently. She checks in on me. I haven’t mentioned that I knew that he was intoxicated and she hasn’t come out and said he feels really bad because he was intoxicated. It’s kind of just an unspoken thing, and I didn’t want that to be a part of that– because at first, I saw the liquor bottles and then it was hearsay on the street, “Oh, yes, he was intoxicated.” But I didn’t know for sure until I did see that he had been charged for it with OUII. It was posted in the newspaper, so it did confirm all the rumors that I had heard about, which is the only reason why I feel okay saying this with you today.
Scott
Right. It’s public information.
Hannah
But I don’t want to put him on blast for that. I care very much about them. This situation is going to be a part of my life always, and all the events that I’ve led after it have been completely, like, emotional and overwhelming. I have so much gratitude for the community that I live in because of the amount of support that I’ve received since then from encouraging words or inspiring people to get out there and get fit for the sake of functional fitness or what have you. But it’s been unspoken.
Pamela, the wife and I had been talking and she suggested that she’d really like to meet me and asked me if she could take me out for coffee and I said that I would absolutely love that. So we chatted back and forth about it and I think it was a couple months after the event that we ended up arranging a date to go out for coffee and I hadn’t asked if he would come. She hadn’t mentioned that he wanted to come or anything, so I just left it at that and just figured, “If someday he wanted to meet me, that’s fine, but if he doesn’t, I completely understand as well.” It’s a very unique situation and I understand it either way.
It was the night before going out for coffee, she messaged me and was like, “He’d really like to join us. Rich would really like to join us for coffee too, if you’re okay with that.” And I was like, “I would absolutely love that.” I met them for coffee, walked in, and they both immediately burst into tears. I burst into tears. He gave me the biggest hug and just cried on my shoulder and she cried on my shoulder and I cried and we sat and we talked for quite a while. It was not until that day– it was months with so many questions of what happened and it wasn’t until that day that I got some of the answers for that. Taking it back to that day when I had yelled out, “Is there somebody in that car?” and they said, yes, I still didn’t know if they had witnessed the accident or how they knew somebody was in the car.
Rich had shared with me that he was driving back from Sunday River, which is quite a distance. There was a convention. He was working for, I guess, a firetruck supply company or something to do with not being a fireman, but something to do with the field of the equipment, I guess. There was a big conference at Sunday River, which is a number of hours from us. He was driving home from there and he said he was driving by the fire department and, being a lifetime firefighter, he was like, “I always check out fire departments. Every time I see one, I’m looking at them and just checking them out. I had the slot to myself that I should pull in here and take a nap. I’m getting really sleepy. I should just pull over and rest for a second.” And then he was like, “Ugh, I’m so close to home, I can make it home.”
Scott
Yeah. He was almost there.
Hannah
Yeah. And I understand that. I mean, I drive home late from work and that two mile stretch right before my house, it’s like, “Oh, I know this road by the back of my hand.” And you do get more tired. It’s a statistic with accidents. The closer you are to home – because you’re so comfortable with the surroundings – is where a lot of those accidents falling asleep behind the wheel of a car happen. He said that he had the thought of pulling into the fire station and then was like, “Ah, I’m so close to home, I can make it home.” And before he knew it, his vehicle had hit the water. So he had fallen asleep behind the wheel. His vehicle hit the water.
When his vehicle hit the water, he actually opened his driver’s side door. The story would’ve almost been completely different right there. He opened up his driver’s side door, but it had hit with such velocity that the water pushed back on the door because it went under quickly. The water had pushed back on the door and the door shut then had immediate electrical failure. So all the doors were locked and he couldn’t unlock the doors, so he couldn’t get out.. And he was like, “I’ve been a firefighter for 45 years. I was trained in ice rescue. I was trained in water rescue, and I didn’t have anything in my car to break a window. I couldn’t get the window broken. I was in the car.” He said that he could hear people yelling from the shore, which must have happened before I got there. He could hear people from the shore yelling, “Get in the back of the car!” And here, he was thinking, “I’m trained in this. I know what to do and how this goes and I can’t do anything about it. I know that rescuers often can’t make it in time, and I’m going to die unless somebody can break this window for me.” He was trying to pound on the window and he was like, “I just heard the voices like get in the back of the car.” He was like, “If it was only that easy.”
He said, once he heard me pounding on the window, that was the first moment that he was like, “Oh, maybe I’m not going to drown. Maybe I’m not going to go down with the car.” It was not until that moment talking with him when he hugged me and was like, “You saved my life” that I could fully embrace the badge of saving somebody’s life, if that makes sense.
Scott
Before this, before you said you had nightmares about driving off a bridge or being trapped in water. Do you still have that fear?
Hannah
I think the fear– I think I’ll always be nervous driving over bridges. I just turned 40 years old and it’s always been a thing in my life that I always kind of have that uneasy feeling when I drive over a bridge, but the dreams have gone away – not that I had the dreams every week or everyday basis, but I haven’t had any more since. I was just sharing this with a friend last night. I did have a dream that I was going by a body of water. It was a beach and a tractor trailer truck had driven backwards into the water and the driver was out on the hood of the truck. I looked at him and I was like, “You don’t need to be saved from this. This is not a bridge dream. This is not the same thing.” So I had this, like, coherent thought in this dream, like this controlling thought, like, “This isn’t the same dream. This isn’t a bridge dream. You’re fine.” which was very strange. It was a very strange message from myself to me.
Scott
What message do you want to get out to people by telling this story?
Hannah
First of all, I have had a number of people – as the story went out in the newspapers and on the news and stuff – a number of my customers walked in with tools to break car windows. First of all, I would say have something in your car that can break a window. Also, I know that we’re not always able to do something. I am grateful for my ability for being able to jump in a situation like that. People are like,– when I tell the story, they often say, “Wait, there are people standing on the shore, and they didn’t jump in, they didn’t do something about it.” And I was like, “Well, they were older and it probably would’ve posed a health risk to a number of people if they jumped in. A number of people may have had to be rescued.”
Also, if you see something, not just driving by it is a big thing, I would say. We witness things in life like bad accidents or this or that. I’ve had a number of people reach out to me with stories, both people I know or complete strangers who found me on Facebook after this because it was featured in the Portland Press Herald, which was funny when it was featured in the Portland Press Herald. My daughter was at the police academy in Augusta doing some of her training for the dispatcher work, and her supervisor printed out the article from the Portland Press Herald, knowing she was my daughter and brought it to class and was like, “This is the mom of one of our students” and used it as a demonstration in class that day, which was pretty cool. But I’ve had a number of people reach out to me and say, “I was driving late at night one time and I saw headlights in the woods and I didn’t stop.” And ever since then, I wondered if that person was okay. I had someone say that they had seen headlights in the woods and, then, a couple days later, they heard the story and the person wasn’t okay, and they’re like, “If I would’ve just stopped, I may have been able to get them help faster than they got help.” Or I had another woman reach out to me and say that she lost a niece to the same sort of scenario as what I came across, and she said, “I always wondered if somebody would’ve just seen her car in the swamp, if they could have done something to help her.
And then a lot of people are like, “I always wonder if I–” and I think I had that same question myself too. You want to think that, if you see something, you would be able to help but, until you’re faced with that reality, you don’t know how you’re going to react. I can’t even say that it was a thought-out thing. It was just an impulse. It was just intuitive. I kind of explained it like I was a marionette. I was just going through the motions, but I wasn’t consciously controlling my actions.
Scott
Of course you weren’t thinking, “Oh, I’m going to jump in. I’m going to get my name in the paper for saving this person.” Obviously, that was the furthest thing. You were just doing everything on autopilot, and so were the people on the shore. I mean, they probably feel some guilt about this as well, even though it turned out okay. They might be thinking, “Man, I was just standing there. Why didn’t I do something?” But not everybody can do everything. Is there any part of this that we haven’t talked about that you want to mention?
Hannah
The things that have happened since have been absolutely– I talked about how incredible this community is and, since this has happened, I was invited to the State House by one of our state representatives and invited to one of their sessions with my family. So my husband and my 7-year-old son got to come with me and we sat in on a session and they presented me with an award in front of 151 state representatives and had my name up on the screen, especially to my 7-year-old son who was like, “That’s my ma” with this huge room full of people. I mean, Miss Maine was there too for something. There was a classroom from, I think, the Lisbon or Lewiston area that was there as a field trip, and the teacher came up to me and was like, “You’re such an inspiration. I’m here with these young kids and this is exactly the type of thing that I want them to see – these inspiring actions. Thank you so much for doing what you did, and I’m so glad that we were here to witness you receiving this award.”
One of our state representatives, actually, from Jefferson, owns the Jefferson market, which is right by where that happened. Our last election, he had been standing outside the town office answering questions and stuff, and my son had talked to him about, if he was elected our representative, my son was like, “I want you to make a law that, if people go hiking, they have to pick up trash.” Because my son and I walk all the time and we always bring trash bags and pick up trash all the time. He was like, “That’s a great idea. I really like that.” So when he wasn’t the representative that had reached out and wanted to present me with this award, he also spoke up in this session and told the story about me bringing my son to the voting booth and talked about that story. So my son was a part of it. So, he was talked about in this huge session in our state capitol, and he thought it was the most amazing thing.
Scott
That’s a big deal.
Hannah
Yeah, it was a huge deal. And then the fire chief from Jefferson had reached out and he was like, “We do a lobster bake for our annual meeting every year and we want to invite you to our lobster bake.” And I love lobster. I was like, “I would love a free lobster meal. Of course I’ll come. I would love that.” And I know a lot of the firefighters and stuff, so I thought it would be a cool opportunity, and they surprised me with an award. My picture was in the paper, like, six times or something. And my parents were so proud and they kept texting me and I’m just so proud. I’m like, “People are probably so sick of seeing my face in the paper.” They know the story by now. It’s been all really positive support. My daughter shared the post and, as parents, we always feel like our kids are embarrassed by us and stuff, but my daughter had shared the post on Facebook, which she never uses because Facebook isn’t cool for kids of her age, but she shared it.
Scott
It’s only for old people now.
Hannah
Yeah, exactly. But she shared the post and said, “I want to be my mom when I grow up.” Stuff like that was just the hugest compliments and, like, really sunk in the magnitude of what it was. And my son just all the time– every time we’re somewhere, somebody’s like, “Are you the one?” I’d go in to drop him off at school and a mom that I see at drop off but didn’t know would stop and be like, “Are you the one that jumped in the water to save that man?” And my son would just be beaming with pride, “That’s my mom! She’s famous.” Not that it was done for the recognition, but the support from the community has been absolutely unreal. And I just, if anything, hope to inspire people to jump into action where they feel like they can or also just stay active so, if they’re presented with a scenario as such, that they could feel confident jumping in.
Scott
You heard me mention that the area where this happened is right where I used to live when we were in Maine. In fact, I’ve eaten at the restaurant where Hannah works. Of course that was before she worked there. It’s called King Eider’s Pub in Damariscotta, Maine – just down the road from Waldoboro, where I lived.
And Hannah is in the What Was That Like Facebook group, along with a lot of our other previous podcast guests, and 9,278 podcast listeners. And we have new people joining the group every single day. And you may have heard, every Tuesday we post a thought-provoking question in the group for everyone to answer or comment on. This past Tuesday’s question was “What was your most memorable vacation?”. I know what mine was. Does something come to mind for you? Come on over and tell us about it. You can join free at https://WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.
And while you’re there, you can ask Hannah any questions about her story that I didn’t think of.
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And now we’re at the segment of the show called The Listener Story. It’s one of my favorite parts of the show, because who doesn’t like a good story? And if you’re feeling a bit guilty right now, I know why – it’s because I’m always asking you to send in YOUR listener story, and you haven’t done it yet. Why not finally do it this week? Today even? Just record a 5-10 minute story on your phone – something interesting that happened to you – and email it to me: Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com
This week’s story, I just love – this listener talks about the time she helped a stranger.
Stay safe, and we’ll see you next time.
(Listener Story)
I just wanted to tell you the story of the time that I decided to help a stranger. A little bit of backstory. I was raised by immigrant parents, and I’m a first generation American, so my siblings and I grew up having to interpret and translate everything for them. At really young ages, I saw the struggles of navigating in a country that is not their own and that doesn’t always particularly want them here. So growing up, I always had a really soft spot for immigrants, especially if they didn’t know how to speak English clearly.
This probably happened when I was around 18. I was walking towards my bus stop after a long day at school, and I heard this man yelling at the bus stop at someone who I couldn’t clearly see. As I got closer, I noticed that the person he was yelling at was not fighting back or saying anything. In fact, she was sitting on the bench waiting for her bus, trying to look away or look down as this guy was yelling at her at the top of his lungs saying horrible, racist things that I won’t repeat here, but some of the things he was saying was, “Why are you not saying anything? Is it because you don’t speak English? Is it because you’re stupid?” When I heard that, I immediately locked into the situation and I quickly recognized that the woman that he was yelling at was Hispanic like myself, and I immediately got enraged. Not only that, but she was actually an older woman. She could have easily been my grandmother.
I don’t really know what came over me then and there, but this feeling of injustice just took over and I just started yelling at him. I told him to get away from her. I told him to keep walking, and I told him to stop being racist. I didn’t touch him, but I kind of got him out of the way, and I sat next to her. I looked her straight in the eye and I told her to not engage with him. I told her to make conversation with me, and I asked her where she was from. Just as I suspected, she was from the same country as my parents.
As we were making small talk, the man continued to yell, and this time he was yelling at both her and I. I got up and I told him to get away from her and to leave us alone and again, to stop being racist. I just kept yelling at him until he finally gave in and walked away. I sat down again and I continued talking to her and I asked if she was okay. I could tell she was scared, but also that she was very thankful for me. I stayed with her until her bus came. I got her on the bus and I made sure she was fine. I did offer to go with her to whatever bus stop she was going to make sure she felt okay, but I didn’t end up having to do that. She did thank me a lot and we parted ways.
Honestly, I would’ve done that for any immigrant, whether they did or didn’t speak my native language. But the point of the story is that I will always try to defend people, especially if they are of a vulnerable kind like most people who have recently arrived from other countries for a better opportunity here, because I just can’t imagine how scary it must feel to be in a country where you don’t know your way around and have to learn a completely new language that takes years to master and feel confident enough to defend yourself in everyday life situations.
Thank you, Scott, for the kindness you always display on the show. I hope you know how many people’s lives you impact and also how you make my day every time I see a new episode pop up.