The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 3)

This book contains 250 stories about heroes and Good Samaritans. Some samples: 1) In August 2011, actor Keanu Reeves was riding a subway in New York City. He noticed that a woman did not have a seat, and he gave up his seat for her. Also doing a good deed were the New Yorkers. They had to have recognized the famous actor but did not bother him. (One person did unobtrusively videotape him from a distance, hence the evidence of his good deed.) 2) Elizabeth Taylor displayed great heroism at least twice in her life. In 1967 in Salzberg, Austria, her then-husband, Richard Burton, and some friends were having drinks at the hotel when a very drunk Englishman got annoyed at Mr. Burton and pulled a gun and told him, “I don’t like you very much.” Two hours went by, and Elizabeth, who was upstairs and ready for bed, tried calling to her husband to come to bed, but of course he was in no position to go to her. Annoyed, Elizabeth came downstairs wearing a see-through chiffon nightie and robe. She saw the Englishman and the gun and walked up to him and said, “Put that thing down!” She took the gun from the man and put it on a coffee table, and then she told her husband, “I want you to come to bed now, buster.” They left, and later the Englishman was arrested. And in 1970 in Yugoslavia, where Mr. Burton was playing Marshall Tito in a movie in a remote location, Ms. Taylor and fashion designer Vicky Tiel used to have a helicopter take them and a lunch each day to their husbands. Unfortunately, the helicopter was rickety, and on one flight a door fell off. Vicky was sitting next to the door, and she felt herself being pulled by the air out of the helicopter, but Ms. Taylor grabbed the poncho Vicky was wearing and kept her in the helicopter and alive. Vicky says, “Hooray for top-quality clothing—and a strong-willed woman who can save your life.” 3) In May 2008 in her house in Hawick, Roxburghshire, Scot-land, Sharon Lyall fell into a diabetic coma. Fortunately, her five-year-old daughter, Holly, and four-year-old niece, Nadine, knew to call 999, Great Britain’s emergency telephone number. They did not speak on the phone, but the phone call was traced and emergency personnel arrived and took Ms. Lyall to a hospital. Ms. Lyall believes that the children knew to call 999 because some emergency person-nel had recently visited Nadine’s nursery. She said, “They saved my life, and I can’t believe it. I didn’t know they even knew anything about dialing 999. I kept thinking if they had thought I was just sleeping and [they had] gone upstairs to play, I definitely wouldn’t be here.”