Tell Me What Happened

On May 10, 2022, Darren Harrison was one of two passengers flying home to Florida from the Bahamas. They were still over the Atlantic Ocean when the pilot suffered a medical emergency and passed out at the controls, sending the plane into a nosedive. Darren was able to pull out of the dive and regain altitude. But he had no idea how he was going to land the plane.

Robert Morgan is an air traffic controller in West Palm Beach, Florid...

Justin Downey had a choice — change his life or die. At 16, he was addicted to heroin. In his 20s, he was in and out of prison. While serving a three-year sentence, Justin’s kids were taken into state custody. He knew he had to become a new man for his family and for himself. Getting clean was the first step. But he also had to find purpose, community and a way to support himself.

Margo Walsh started drinking when she was 15. By the...

On September 11, 2001, Stanley Praimnath went to work on the 81st floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center, same as he always did. When a plane struck the north tower, Stanley and many others began their evacuation. But when he reached the lobby, he was told his building was safe and to return to work. He was back in his office minutes later when a plane hit the south tower and tore through his floor.

Brian Clark’s office ...

In April 2023, Liv Titor visited Dreamtime beach on Australia's Gold Coast. What happened to her that day felt like a nightmare. After a quick swim, Liv walked out onto a sandbar beside some rocks. Then she felt a pull at her legs and fell into the water. Liv stepped into a rip current that quickly pulled her out to sea towards massive waves and jagged rocks. 

John Gordon, a local surfer, was making the most of the big swells at the...

Lani Williams and her mother, Sincerity, could smell smoke, but that wasn’t rare on Maui. Brush fires happen with some regularity. This fire, they quickly learned, was different. 

Five hundred miles to the south, Hurricane Dora had kicked up unusually troublesome winds. In Lahaina, Hawaii, where Lani and Sincerity lived, those winds downed power lines and whipped sparks into a full-blown wildfire that was closing in on them. They tr...

Bob Tillotson knew the avalanche danger was high when he set out with friends into the Utah backcountry on his snowmobile. But he also knew which areas to avoid. Or so he thought. On January 13, 2024, an avalanche hit Bob without warning, carrying him down the mountain in a wave of snow. When he stopped, he was completely buried and separated from his group.

Dustin Sweeten was snowmobiling with a separate crew that day. Just before ...

When Gabriel Otrin and Klever Freire stepped into their office elevator, they naturally assumed they’d be able to get out. It was August 2018, and a massive downpour was causing floods all over Toronto. Gabriel and Klever were working late and went to check on Klever’s car in the basement garage. Before they reached the bottom, however, the elevator stopped with a jerk and began to quickly fill with water. They couldn’t open the do...

Nicole Rakowski arrived in Iceland looking for adventure. She left in a wheelchair. In February 2017, Nicole and two friends hiked to a natural hot spring just south of Reykjavík. When they arrived, Nicole took off her boots, changed into her bathing suit and stepped onto the riverbank beside the steaming water. She immediately began to sink into the mud and felt excruciating pain. She screamed for help. 

Lee Ricasa was taking a rel...

In 1941, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, the Bogancha family saved two young Jewish girls from Nazi soldiers, giving them fake identities and hiding them in an orphanage. That act of kindness would ripple across time and, amazingly, lead to the help their descendants needed after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Connecting those dates begins with a book. In 2009, Greg Dawson published Hiding in the Spotlight, a book about his mother, Zhanna Ars...

When her crowded New York City subway train screeched to an emergency stop, K.Page Stuart Valdes melted in fear. She’d recently had a stroke nobody could explain. Terrified it would happen again, right there surrounded by strangers, K.Page felt anxiety wash over her. Until one warm voice cut through the fog. 

That stranger, just another face on a train moments before, helped K.Page find her way out of the panic attack and get on wit...

On the morning of Christmas Eve 2022, Joe White set out on the long walk to his job in the North Park neighborhood of Buffalo, New York. Joe has autism and he didn’t realize he was walking into the deadliest winter storm to hit the region in a century. Severely frostbitten and disoriented, Joe stumbled into snowdrifts and called out for help. A stranger heard his plea.

Sha’Kyra Aughtry bundled Joe into her home. She was able to call...

Taylor Hash, a student pilot, had just taken off on her third solo flight when she got the shock of her life. Over the radio, she heard another pilot telling air traffic control that her front wheel fell off during takeoff. Taylor knew she’d have to land the plane with no front wheel, but she had no idea how or what to do next. 

In a case of right place, right time, a veteran pilot named Chris Yates happened to be at the airport tha...

Kristy Millar spent days preparing for Hurricane Ian, but when the storm hit, her family ended up trapped in their rapidly flooding home. They escaped, but the storm had turned their street into a river. To get to higher ground, Kristy and her 3-year-old son were going to have to swim. Enter Kevin Ott.

Ott was also out in the storm, determined to rescue his kids’ grandmother — who happened to be Kristy’s neighbor. Driving a borrowed...

Phil Mummert was in the middle of a perfect day of surfing at Bunker Bay, one of his regular spots in western Australia, until he was suddenly knocked off his board. When he surfaced, his board was broken, his leg was bleeding, and there was a great white shark charging at him. 

Using only his bare hands, feet and what was left of his surfboard, Phil fought for his life. But he knew he wouldn’t last long against a 16-foot shark. Tha...

René Compeán had hiked in Angeles National Forest many times. So he didn’t think twice when he set out on one of his favorite trails for a quick hike. But to save time, he went off trail — and ended up lost and relying on a rapidly dying cell phone to call for help. René was unprepared to spend a cold night in the mountains with wildlife roaming around him, and his mental and physical health deteriorated quickly.

Rescue teams strugg...

Suamhirs Piraino-Guzman was working at a job he loved, making enough money to provide for his family. At just 14, he was the father figure in his home in Honduras. One night after work he was abducted and smuggled into the United States. He was sold into sexual exploitation. For months he was tortured, beaten, drugged, starved and raped.

But he was rescued.

Sabrina Goosby took Suamhirs under her wing and taught him how to use his exp...

Arapahoe Basin is a legendary ski resort in Colorado, and when it’s a powder day, skiers wake up at the crack of dawn to get up the hill for those fresh tracks. That’s exactly what Richard Dempsey did, except he only got a few runs in before everything changed. Richard is able to recount his story thanks to a slackliner named Mickey Wilson who risked his own life to save someone he met that morning.

We also speak to author and retir...

Lindsay Bull has worked at Scales and Tails for years. She has hosted numerous demonstrations with the animals at the facility, but one wrong move can end in disaster. That’s what happened during a child’s birthday party. 

The main attraction, a nine foot long alligator named Darth Gator mistook her hand for food and the race was on to save Lindsay’s hand. Thanks to Donnie Wiseman who attended the birthday party with his niece, Lind...

Sixty-five horses live at Tamara Boole’s equestrian center. That is a lot of large animals to move to safety in a short period of time. But that’s what had to be done as the fires from the CZU Lightning Complex Fires bore down on Felton, California in August 2020.

Thanks to local ranchers, including another stable owner - Michelle Le Clair,  the horses at Tamara Boole’s Covered Bridge Equestrian Center were safely evacuated in the k...