When he was 6 years old, Tom Sinclair wandered away from his family's campsite on Lake Superior to join the other children who liked to play on the rocky shoreline.
"I'd been there for a while," Sinclair recalled. "And all of a sudden I looked up and I realized, 'Hey, I'm all alone.'"
He couldn't see the campground, and he wasn't sure which way to go. So he started walking, moving from one point of land along the shoreline to the next.
"I've got the logic of a 6-year-old and I thought ... 'They can't have hidden a whole campground. It must just be a little ways further.'"
But the campground never appeared — just the trees and the frigid waves of Lake Superior, breaking on the rocky coastline.
"When I finally could go no more, I found an overhang that protected me from the wind. A piece of driftwood was my pillow," Sinclair said. " I was alone, except for the gnats that bit my skin raw as I huddled in the dark."
At dawn, he set out again. That's when he heard a voice behind him.
"I heard someone say, 'Tom, is that you?'" Sinclair said. "And I turned around, and there was the man who became my unsung hero."
Sinclair remembers that the stranger had red hair and a huge grin and was clambering down from a high boulder. He believes the man was another camper who had been searching for him.
"He came over to me and he said, 'Tom, how would you like to see your mom?'" Sinclair recalled. "I said, 'Yes, I would really love to see her.' And he took me by the hand, and he said, 'Well, let's go back this other way.'"
They began to walk together. But Sinclair soon realized how tired he was and had to stop.
"So my hero, who had walked through the night to find me, hoisted me up on his shoulders and carried me," Sinclair said.
"And he just talked to me as we walked back to the campsite. And I didn't know how terrified and exhausted I was until I was on his shoulders and realized I was safe."
The man estimated Sinclair had walked at least 3 miles.
Only later did Sinclair learn how extensive the search had been. Dozens of people had been looking for him — park rangers, even prison trustees — while campers were warned not to leave the campsite.
"And [the person who] really found me was this one guy who ignored the advice and warnings of the search teams not to go out," Sinclair said.
" Their search ended because one person, my unsung hero, thought, 'If I were a lost little boy, where might I go?' And he followed his intuition the wrong way through the night until he could bring me home."
Today, at 66, Sinclair still has the newspaper clipping about his rescue: "Boy Found on Lake Superior." When he looks back on that day, which he has done often over the years, he believes the man may have saved his life.
"I hope that the life you lived after that has been a life of exploration," Sinclair said, speaking to his rescuer. "And I want to thank you for having the courage and the inspiration to go a different way."
My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.
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