In the summer of 2010, Tracy Zito and her family were vacationing near Lake Michigan. One morning, Zito took her niece, her nephew, and her three kids to the beach. It was the day after a large storm.
"It was a very hot, humid, still cloudy, windy morning," Zito recalled.
When they arrived at the beach, Zito set down some beach chairs she'd lugged from the car. When she looked up, she noticed all the kids, except her youngest, were gone. They'd all headed for the water.
"I'm sure it looked like fun. But I saw these big, very loud waves and a current, and immediately ran into the water yelling after them to come back in."
Zito's niece and nephew, who were older than her children, quickly turned around and got out of the water. Her daughter followed suit. But her son Nicholas, who was six years old at the time, didn't hear her over the crashing waves.
"I kept swimming towards him and was yelling so loud just to try to get my voice over the sound of those waves," Zito remembered. "Eventually, he turned around and had these huge, big eyes, and I knew he realized something was really wrong."
The current made swimming difficult, and when she finally got close to Nicholas, he disappeared under the water, only to reappear far away.
" I don't know how, but I got to him, grabbed his arms, and told him to lock his hands around my neck. All of a sudden, a wave came over us. We somersaulted under the water. I didn't even know which way was up when that finished. But eventually, we surfaced, and I was completely out of breath."
Terrified, Zito raised one of her arms in the air, hoping someone on the beach might see her signal for help. Then another wave crashed over them. But this time, when they resurfaced, Zito realized there was a man next to her.
"He grabbed my arm but was unable to move me. So I unlocked my son's arms, gave him to this man, and asked him to please save my son."
Somehow, the man managed to get her son safely back to shore. Zito swam parallel to the beach until she escaped the current and made it back herself. Relieved and exhausted, she walked back to rejoin her family. The man who had saved Nicholas was sitting with his family nearby.
"Eventually, I walked over to thank him for his selflessness and for saving the life of my son. Looking into each other's eyes, we started crying."
Zito never saw the man again. But more than fifteen years later, thinking about what he did that day still brings tears to her eyes.
"He must have [run] as soon as he saw my hand up, and for someone to do that is the most selfless act. I'd like to thank him for showing me that that exists [in the world] and helping me understand how to be a better person, because it's affected me for the rest of my life."
My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday.
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