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From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankar

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Vedantan. This is My Unsung

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Hero, stories where one person reached out

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to help another in a time of

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need. Hello,

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I would like to thank my unsung hero.

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He invited me to come

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over for Christmas because we're

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both. We were my unsung heroes. I just want

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to say thank you. Today's

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story comes from Karen Muller. In

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January 2020, Karen's father

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passed away. Her mother

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decided to downsize from their big house

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with a three-car garage to a

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retirement home. On a

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weekly basis, Karen would drive two hours

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from Ohio to Indiana to prepare her

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parents' house for sale, fixing

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the shutters, repainting the dining room,

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scraping mold off the roof. She

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also had to sort through decades of

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her parents' belongings. So

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we started getting boxes and going

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through all the items in the house. And

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we had our trash

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pile, our let's take

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this to the retirement apartment

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and let's give this away. So

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they had these German

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steins. There were encyclopedias.

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We had these Time

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Life series on the

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cosmos. There was a Pac-Man machine,

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a ping pong table. They had

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two Christmas trees, old black and

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white photos from my great

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aunts. There was an old

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stamp collection of used stamps.

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And the boxes started

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filling up in the garage, higher

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and higher. They had to be

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five or six boxes high. And

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when you opened up that garage door, it

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was just a wall of boxes. And

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I just kept thinking. oh my goodness, what

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are we gonna do? I mean, how am

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I gonna get rid of all these boxes?

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I live in Ohio, she lives in Indiana,

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and I don't have any means to

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transport all this stuff.

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And then one day I was driving

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over there and I popped open the

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garage and it

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was empty. All

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the boxes were gone. I

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literally had tears in my eyes and this

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huge weight lifted off of

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my chest. And I went

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in and I said, oh my goodness, who

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took all the boxes? What happened to them? And

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my mom said, oh, Stan came over. Stan

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was my mom's best

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friend's husband. And

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he had a truck and offered

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his services. To

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me, it was just a miracle that somebody

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had done something. I'm

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the only one left. And

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so all of this fell on

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me. And I was just

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like, help. And he

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did. And I didn't ask. I mean,

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it was just a total surprise. And

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it was just, it was lovely. Karen

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Muller of Sylvania, Ohio.

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Stan Quimby, the hero of the story, passed

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away about a year ago. Karen's

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mother, Mary, is 92. We'd

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love to hear about your own unsung hero. Use

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your phone to record your story

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and email it to us at

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myunsunghero at hiddenbrain.org. That's

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myunsunghero at hiddenbrain.org.

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I'm Shankar Vedantham. See

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you soon.