On January 2, 2007, construction worker Wesley Autrey was standing on a Manhattan subway platform with his two little girls. A young film student named Cameron Hollopeter had a seizure and fell onto the tracks just as a train’s headlights appeared. Autrey jumped down, realized there wasn’t time to lift him out, and instead pressed the young man down into the shallow trough between the rails and lay on top of him. The train rolled right over them with only inches to spare, and both men lived. His girls up on the platform thought they had lost their daddy, until they heard him call out from under the train that both of them were okay.
