By Darren Chaker * * * While visiting a girlfriend in San Diego on October 6, 2009. I heard a women yelling for help. I called 911, ran out the door without a shirt, and by the time I got down the stairs to run to downstairs--a police officer arrived drove past the building. I flagged him down. We rushed up the stairs of the next building, to find a woman covered in blood and her son standing near her. She identified him as beating her husband's skull in. The son was arrested and I was interviewed by homicide detectives and later by the media.

It's a sad to day, when a scream echoes in the night and it might as well be from a mute. I was the only person out of an apartment building of 400+, who answered the call for help. However, I would charge in to help a stranger in a heartbeat even if it cost my own.