1 . It was around 11:30 p.m. Corion Evans was hanging out with his friends near the Pascagoula River in July when a car with three girls inside fell into it. It came to a stop some 20 feet from land, and then sank. The driver had blindly followed her GPS.

Evans and his friends got to the river’s edge. In the darkness, they could barely make out the girls holding on to the roof, the only part of the car still above water. But they could hear screaming. Evans pulled off his shirt and shoes, and then dived into the water, a river he knew alligators (短吻鳄) call home. He helped the first girl he saw, keeping her head above water and leading her ashore.

Just then, a man called out. Police Officer Garry Mercer arrived. He dived into the river to help another of the girls. But halfway back to shore, the girl had run out of her strength and went underwater, pulling Mercer down with her. Evans jumped back into the water and helped them until they could stand. “If he hadn’t been there, who knows?” Mercer said.

There was still one girl in the water, Cora Watson, who could not swim. She was struggling to keep herself floating (浮) on the water, scared. “I thought there was little hope that I would survive. I just knew my last breath was coming at that time,” Watson said. “My mind said ‘You’re slowly losing yourself.’” She began to go under. Then, a touch. “Evans had caught me.”

The three girls and Officer Mercer were taken to the hospital and soon they were discharged. After knowing Evans’ act, his mother, Marquita Evans, said, “Corion Evans broke his curfew (晚间必须回家的时间). But I was not mad. He had a good reason. And he did really well.”

2 . When she was just 17 years old, Jerry crashed into the back of a truck that was waiting to turn in a left turn lane. The crash is a life-changing one for her. Because of the crash, she’s blind in one eye, lost her sense of smell, lost some of her hearing, lost the ability to create tears, and she cannot fall asleep naturally.

“Initially, I thought I would not be defeated but clearly I was completely wrong. Apart from the medical problems, the hardest part about my life after the car accident was the fact that I was alone.” Jerry said, “Everyone was away at college, I wasn’t. I couldn’t drive, couldn’t go to college. My friends who used to hang around with me were there for me at first, but after a while they stopped coming by.”

“I looked up on her Facebook page, and she said on there: Can anybody please hang out with me today? I don’t have any friends.” recalled Jerry’ s mother, Ketty.

In time, Jerry and her mother teamed up with the US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to make a video. They want to get the point across that texting while driving can have life-transforming consequences.

In the video Jerry appealed to drivers not to text while driving. She admitted she was checking and sending messages via her phone when she crashed her car into the back of the truck.

“Don’t text your loved ones when you know they’re driving,” said Jerry’s mother. “It can change their lives forever.”

“If you get a text, don’t look at it,” Jerry said. “It’s not worth it.”

4 . A few years ago, I took a trip to New York City with my mom and my cousin. It was a girls’ weekend to celebrate my cousin’s upcoming wedding. We spent the morning shopping and stopped in a family-owned Italian restaurant. The woman who greeted us was the cook, and her elderly mother who'd started the restaurant was behind the counter (柜台). There were only five tables in the whole restaurant and we were the only customers.

We were chatting about what we wanted to do that night when my cousin suddenly stood up and pointed behind my mom and me. Black smoke started pouring from a staircase (楼梯) in the hallway that led to the businesses above that one. Thinking the floor above us must be on fire, my mom ran to the back to tell the cook, while we tried to convince the elderly Italian woman, who actually couldn’t speak English, to come outside. She couldn’t see the smoke from her place behind the counter and just scolded (训斥) us in Italian.

Finally, my cousin physically picked the lady up. Thankfully, she was a tiny lady and my cousin was strong. We got her outside and she finally saw the smoke. My mom took her phone out to call the firemen, but someone else must have already done that because we heard the sirens (警报声) coming. The firetruck rounded the corner, nearly hitting the front end of a cab. The passengers in the back of the cab started screaming, but the driver looked calm.

Thankfully, no one was hurt. We didn’t find out what had caused the fire, but at least it didn’t spread beyond the second floor. The cook thanked us for helping them, and her mother kept hugging my cousin. The rest days were peaceful compared to that day, and I’ve always wanted to go back and see if that restaurant was still there.