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Later in life, certain individuals are no longer physically able to drive, or feel the need to do so. In Florida, however, 94-year-old Alice Modine is still quite comfortable behind the wheel – even after having a near-death experience.
Earlier this month in Boca Raton, Florida, Modine found herself on the road and driving head-on into a torrential rainfall. It was coming down so heavily, in fact, that Modine had difficulty seeing the road ahead of her.
In an attempt to play it safe, Modine pulled over to the side of the road. Unfortunately, she pulled over too far and wound up driving her car into a lake. Soon enough, water began to enter her vehicle.
“I tried to move the car forward and back nothing worked. I tried to pull down the windows they didn’t work, I tried to open the doors, nothing worked,” recalled Modine in an interview with WPTV. “So I thought to myself this has happened before, not to me, but to other people and I may stay in the car forever. I’ve lived a good life; I’ve had a very happy life up to now. It just may be the end of it. I didn’t panic. I didn’t feel upset.”
As Modine began coming to terms with a potentially fatal situation, a hero emerged.
“The door opened and this very nice young man said ‘hold onto me, I’ll get you to a dry place,’” said Modine. “So I held onto him, did exactly as he told me, and he deposited me in the grass.”
The man then asked Modine if she needed anything from the vehicle. Modine replied that she’d like her purse and the car’s paperwork from the glove box. He went back to the sinking vehicle and admirably retrieved both.
A few days after going public with her story, Modine spoke on the phone with her rescuer. She didn’t reveal his name, but provided details of their conversation.
Offered Modine: “I said that was really heroic of you to go back in and save my life and he said, ‘I did what came naturally,’ and I said but I bet nobody would have done it, he said ‘no, that’s true’ cause he kept watching traffic and nobody stopped.”
-Adam Grant
