Wesley AutreyThese are the kinds of stories I love. I mean, I hate that people find themselves in these kinds of situations, but these stories remind us that there are heros everywhere. We never know when we are in the presence of a real hero.

Bystander Pulls of Daring Rescue

(CBS/AP) A quick-thinking commuter saved a teenager who apparently suffered a seizure and fell onto subway tracks in Upper Manhattan, by jumping onto the tracks himself and pushing them both between the rails, beneath the oncoming train.

Cameron Hollopeter, 19, of Littleton, Mass., fell onto the tracks at Broadway’s 137th Street station Tuesday. Another subway passenger, 50-year-old Wesley Autrey of Manhattan, was standing on the platform with his two daughters whom he was taking home so he could go to his construction job.

When Autrey saw Hollopeter fall, he quickly took action and left his daughters to jump on the tracks to bring the man to safety as an oncoming train approached.

“I didn’t want the man’s body to get run over,” Autrey said. “Plus, I was with my daughters and I didn’t want them to see that.”

Autrey jumped down onto the tracks and initially tried to pull Hollopeter up to the platform but had to decide whether he could get him up in time to avoid both of them getting hit.

He had to hold the guy down with his own body while the train ran over them.

“I was trying to pull him up, but his weight [was too much] plus he was fighting against me — he didn’t know who I was,” Autrey told CBS station WCBS-TV.

Autrey said the man was still moving violently from the seizure, so he pulled him into the center of the tracks — away from the high-voltage third rail — and laid on top of him. “The only thing that popped up in my mind was, ‘OK, well, go for the gutter,’” Autrey said. “So I dove in, I pinned him down and once the first car ran over us, my thing with him was to keep him still.”

The train operator saw something happening and put on the emergency brakes. A couple of cars had passed over the men before it came to a stop. There were only 2 inches between the men and the bottom of the train.

Autrey’s daughters thought the train had killed their father and the teen, but were relieved to hear their father shout up from under the train that the two were fine.

Hollopeter, a student at the New York Film Academy, was taken to a hospital, where he was in stable condition with only minor injuries.

Hollopeter’s stepmother, Rachel Hollopeter, said Autrey was “an angel.”

“He was so heroic,” she said early Wednesday in a telephone interview. “If he wasn’t there, this would be a whole different call.”

Onlooker Patricia Brown said Autrey, a Vietnam War veteran, “needs to be recognized as a hero.” Others cheered him and hugged him outside the train station.

In an interview on television Autrey said everyone was screaming and he yelled up for everyone to stop screaming and tell his daughters that he was okay. They had to lay under the train for about 20 minutes while the operators made sure they could get them out from under the train safely.

Autrey did what heros do - he moved towards danger to help someone else, even a stranger. His immediate instinct was to take action rather than sit by and watch helplessly.

I liked what he said at the end of the interview I watched on TV. He said he couldn’t sleep after the incident cause he kept thinking, ‘That was really stupid!’. LOL

The Anchoress says a hero is as a hero does.

Blue Crab Blvd calls him a modest hero.

The Right Coast:

Let me tell you, as someone who has waited on many subway stations, including I believe that one, I really do not think I would have done what Wesley Autry did (nor would I have known how to save the man and myself). This is quite extraordinary. The man deserves the admiration and praise of everyone. Through his deed and example, he makes the world a better place.

Who knows why some men are heroes. But my guess is that it has something to do with the fact that he had been in the Navy.

Wide Awake Cafe has insights as to how Autrey’s act will impact his daughters. From a personal experience of her own.