One Astronaut’s Heart-Pounding Account of Almost Breaking the Hubble Space Telescope

His mission was to fix an instrument that could detect the atmospheres of far-off planets. One stubborn screw derailed the entire thing.

In 1984, I was a senior at Columbia and I went to see the movie The Right Stuff. And a couple of things really struck me in that movie. The first was the view out the window of John Glenn’s spaceship—the view of Earth, how beautiful it was on the big screen. I wanted to see that view. And secondly, the camaraderie between the original seven astronauts depicted in that movie—how they were good friends, how they stuck up for each other, how they would never let each other down. I wanted to be part of an organization like that.

And it rekindled a boyhood dream that had gone dormant over the years—to be an astronaut. And I just could not ignore this dream. I had to pursue it. So I was lucky enough to get accepted to MIT.

While I was there, I started applying to NASA to become an astronaut. I filled out my application, and I received a letter that said they weren’t quite interested. So I waited a couple of years, and I sent in another application. They sent me back pretty much the same letter. So I applied a third time, and this time I got an interview, so they got to know who I was. And then they told me no.

So I applied a fourth time. And on April 22, 1996, I picked up the phone, and it was Dave Leestma, the head of flight-crew operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

He said, “Hey, Mike. How you doing this morning?”

I said, “I really don’t know, 
Dave. You’re gonna have to tell me.”

He said, “Well, I think you’re gonna be pretty good after this phone call ’cause we wanna make you an 
astronaut.”

Thirteen years later, I’m on the space shuttle Atlantis, about to do a space walk on the Hubble Space Telescope. Our task that day was to repair an instrument that had failed that was used by scientists to detect the atmospheres of far-off planets. Planets in other solar systems could be analyzed using this spectrograph to see if we might find a planet that was Earth-like, or a planet that could support life. The power supply on this instrument had failed so it could no longer be used.

And there was no easy way to repair the instrument, because when they launched this thing, it was buttoned up with an access panel that blocked the power supply that had failed. This access panel had 117 small screws with washers, and just to play it safe, they put glue on the screw threads so they would never come apart.

But we really wanted this capability back, so we started working. And for five years, we designed a space walk and over 100 new space tools to be used—at great taxpayers’ expense, millions of dollars; thousands of people worked on this. And my buddy Mike Good (whom we call Bueno)—he and I were gonna do this space walk.

Inside was Drew Feustel, one of my best friends. He was gonna read me the checklist. We had practiced this for years. They built us our own practice instrument and gave us our own set of tools so we could practice in our office, in our free time, during lunch, after work, on the weekends. We 
became like one mind. We had our own language. Now was the day to go out and do this task.

The thing I was most worried about when leaving the air lock that day was my path to get to the telescope, because it was along the side of the space shuttle. If you look over the edge of the shuttle, it’s like looking over a cliff, with 350 miles to go down to the planet.

There are no good handrails. And I’m kind of a big goon. And when there’s no gravity, you could go spinning off into space. I knew I had 
a safety tether that would probably hold, but I also had a heart that I wasn’t so sure about. I knew they would get me back; I just wasn’t sure what they would get back on the end of the tether when they reeled me in. I was really concerned about this. I took my time, and I got through the treacherous path to the telescope.

One of the first things I had to do was to remove from the telescope a handrail that was blocking the access panel. There were two screws on the top, and they came off easily. There was one screw on the bottom left, and that came out easily. The fourth screw is not moving. My tool is moving, but the screw is not. I look closely, and it’s stripped. I realize that that handrail’s not coming off, which means I can’t get to the access panel with these 117 screws that I’ve been worrying about for five years, which means I can’t get to the power supply that failed, which means we’re not gonna be able to fix this instrument today, which means all these smart scientists can’t find life on other planets.

I’m to blame for this.

And I could see what they would be saying in the science books of the 
future. This was gonna be my legacy. My children and my grandchildren would read in their classrooms:

We would know if there was life on other planets … but Gabby and Daniel’s dad broke the Hubble Space Telescope, and we’ll never know.

Through this nightmare that had just begun, I looked at my buddy Bueno, next to me in his space suit, and he was there to assist in the 
repair but could not take over my role. It was my job to fix this thing. I turned and looked into the cabin where my five crewmates were, and I realized nobody in there had a space suit on. They couldn’t come out here and help me. And then I actually looked at Earth; I looked at our planet, and I thought, There are billions of people down there, but there’s no way I’m gonna get a house call on this one. No one can help me.

I felt this deep loneliness. And it wasn’t just a “Saturday afternoon with a book” alone. I felt … detached from Earth. I felt that I was by 
myself, and everything that I knew and loved and that made me feel comfortable was far away. And then it started getting dark and cold.

Because we travel 17,500 miles an hour, 90 minutes is one lap around Earth. So it’s 45 minutes of sunlight and 45 minutes of darkness. And when you enter the darkness, it is not just darkness. It’s the darkest black I have ever experienced. It’s the complete 
absence of light. It gets cold, and 
I could feel that coldness, and I could sense the darkness coming. And it just added to my loneliness.

For the next hour or so, we tried all kinds of things, and nothing worked. And then they called up and said they wanted me to go to the front of the shuttle to get a toolbox, vise grips, and tape. 
I thought, We are running out of ideas. I didn’t even know we had tape on board. I’m gonna be the first astronaut to use tape on a space walk.

But I got to the front of the space shuttle, and I opened up the toolbox, and there was the tape. At that point, I was very close to the front of the orbiter, right by the cabin window, and I knew that my best pal was in there, trying to help me out. I could not even stand to think of looking at him, because I felt so bad about the way this day was going, with all the work he and I had put in.

But through the corner of my eye, through my helmet, just the side there, I can kinda see that he’s trying to get my attention. And I look up at him, and he’s just cracking up, smiling and giving me the OK sign. And I’m like, Is there another space walk going on out here? I really can’t talk to him, because if I say anything, the ground will hear. You know, Houston. The control center. So I’m playing charades with him, like, What are you, nuts? And I didn’t wanna look before, because I thought he was gonna give me the finger because he’s gonna go down in the history books with me. But he’s saying, No, we’re OK. We’re gonna make it through this. We’re in this together. You’re doing great. Just hang in there.

If there was ever a time in my life that I needed a friend, it was at that moment. And there was my buddy, just like I saw in that movie, the 
camaraderie of those guys sticking together. I didn’t believe him at all. 
I figured that we were outta luck. But I thought, At least if I’m going down, I’m going down with my best pal.

And as I turned to make my way back over the treacherous path one more time, Houston called up and told us what they had in mind. They wanted me to use that tape to tape the bottom of the handrail and then see if I could yank it off the telescope. They said it was gonna take about 
60 pounds of force for me to do that.

And Drew answers the call, and he goes to me, “Sixty pounds of force? Mass, I think you got that in you. What do you think?”

And I’m like, “You bet, Drew. Let’s go get this thing.”

And Drew’s like, “Go!” And bam! That thing comes right off. I pull out my power tool, and now I’ve got that access panel with those 117 little bitty screws with their washers and glue, and I’m ready to get each one of them. And I pull the trigger on my power tool, and nothing happens. I look, and I see that the battery is dead. I turn my head to look at Bueno, who’s in his space suit, again looking at me like, What else can happen today?

And I said, “Drew, the battery’s dead in this thing. I’m gonna go back to the air lock, and we’re gonna swap out the battery, and I’m gonna 
recharge my oxygen tank.” Because I was getting low on oxygen; I needed to get a refill.

The light in space, when you’re in the sunlight, is the brightest, whitest, purest light I have ever experienced, and it brings with it warmth. I actually started feeling optimistic.

He said, “Go.” And I was going back over that shuttle, and I noticed two things. One was that the treacherous path that I was so scaredy-cat-sissy-pants about going over—it wasn’t scary anymore. That in the course of those couple of hours 
of fighting this problem, 
I had gone up and 
down that thing about 20 times, and my fear had gone away because there was no time to be a scaredy-cat; it was time to get the job done. What we were doing was more important than me being worried, and it was actually kinda fun going across that little jungle gym, back and forth over the shuttle.

The other thing I noticed was that 
I could feel the warmth of the sun. We were about to come into a day pass. And the light in space, when you’re in the sunlight, is the brightest, whitest, purest light I have ever experienced, and it brings with it warmth. I could feel that coming, and I actually started feeling optimistic.

Sure enough, the rest of the walk went well. We got all those screws out, a new power supply in, buttoned it up. They tried it; turned it on from the ground. The instrument came back to life. And at the end of that space walk, after about eight hours, my commander says, “Hey, Mass, you know, you’ve got about 15 minutes before Bueno’s gonna be ready to come in. Why don’t you go outside of the air lock and enjoy the view?”

So I go outside, take my tether, clip it on a handrail, let go, and I just look. And Earth—from our altitude at Hubble, we’re 350 miles up. We can see the curvature. We can see the roundness of our home, our home planet. It’s the most magnificent thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like looking into heaven. It’s paradise.

And I thought, This is the view that I imagined in that movie theater all those years ago. As I looked at Earth, I also noticed that I could turn my head, and I could see the moon and the stars and the Milky Way galaxy. I could see our universe. I could turn back and see our beautiful planet.

And that moment changed my relationship with Earth. Because for me, Earth had always been a kind of safe haven, you know, where I could go to work or be in my home or take my kids to school. But I realized it really wasn’t that. It really is its own spaceship. And I had always been a space traveler. All of us here today, even 
tonight, we’re on this spaceship Earth, amongst all the chaos of the universe, whipping around the sun and around the Milky Way galaxy.

A few days later, we get back. And I’m driving home to my house with my family. My wife starts telling me that while watching the NASA television she detected a sadness in my voice that she had never heard from me before.

And we turned the corner to come down our block, and I could see my neighbors were outside. They had decorated my house, and there were American flags everywhere. And my neighbor across the street was holding a pepperoni pizza and a six-pack of beer, two things that unfortunately we still cannot get in space.

I got out of the car, and they were all hugging me. I was still in my blue flight suit, and they were saying how happy they were to have me back and how great everything turned out. I realized my friends, man, they were thinking about me the whole time. They were with me too. I wish I would’ve known that when I was up there.

The next day we had our return ceremony; we made speeches. The engineers who had worked all these years with us, our trainers, the people that worked in the control center, they started telling me how they were running around like crazy while I was up there in my little nightmare, thinking I was all alone.

I realized that at the time when I felt so lonely, when I felt detached from everyone else—literally, like I was away from the planet—that really I never was alone, that my family and my friends and the people I worked with, the people that I loved and the people that cared about me, they were with me every step of the way.


Michael Massimino, PhD, is a veteran of two NASA space flights (STS-109 in March 2002 and STS-125 in May 2009) and has logged a total of 571 hours, 47 minutes in space, and a cumulative total of 30 hours, 4 minutes during four spacewalks. A graduate of Columbia University and MIT, Michael is a professor at the Columbia University School of Engineering and is a Senior Advisor at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, as well as a sought after inspirational speaker. Mike appears regularly on television news and talk shows, and has appeared on The Big Bang Theory six times. Follow Mike on Twitter at @Astro_mike or visit his website at www.mikemassimino.com. Mike’s upcoming memoir, SPACEMAN, will be published by Crown Archetype October 2016.

This story was told before a crowd at a “Grand Slam” storytelling event hosted by the Moth in New York City. Reader’s Digest is proud to partner with the Moth on similar events in cities across the country, with the best stories to appear in the July/August issue of RD

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The Reunion That Took 77 Years to Happen

A teenaged Minka Disbrow was forced to give her newborn daughter Betty Jane up for adoption in 1929, but she never stopped thinking about her baby. Nearly 80 years later, Betty Jane—now named Ruth—found her.

The car was pulling in.

Minka’s heart was pounding, but her legs carried her forward. Off to the side, she saw Grant already in the driveway with his video camera.

Faces flashed through the car windows. She squinted at the front passenger seat, but Betty Jane was not there. Through the tinted back window, she saw a blaze of white hair. Minka stepped forward, opened the rear door, and was met with a great spray of flowers.

From behind them, she saw her daughter’s face, the one she’d seen only in photographs, and heard the voice she’d heard only over the phone.

Everything disappeared behind one longing. To get her daughter into her arms. And then, she was.

Minka’s sight blurred. Her voice stuck in her throat. Her arms wrapped tightly around her girl, hands clenched against her back. She’d waited more than 28,000 days for this, her daughter safe in her embrace. The joy of it was boundless.

Betty Jane. Her Betty Jane, returned to her at last. The infant, the little girl, the teenager, the young mother, the grandmother. Here was Betty Jane as a chubby baby, playing dress up, losing her first tooth, putting on lipstick, wearing a wedding dress, expecting her first baby, her fourth, her sixth. Here was Betty Jane as a new grandmother, an empty nester, an elderly woman. Here was everything all at once, a lifetime in a moment.

Minka had missed every second of it but she had waited, she had waited forever and she had kept her promise, she had never ­forgotten—­and now, impossibly, her Betty Jane had been given back to her.

Finally Minka let go a little, pulling back to see that dear face ­again—­a face as lined as her own, and familiar only from recent photographs. But Minka believed she recognized those pale blue eyes. She looked into them, and then her daughter pressed in again and kissed her cheek. Minka managed to speak, her words pushing through a throat thickened by the weight of a million “I love you”s that had never been spoken.

“You’re as wonderful . . . as I thought you would be,” Minka said.

Her daughter was pressing flowers into her arms, and Teresa came forward for a hug, and then here was Brian, the grandson who had brought her girl home. The moment whirled around Minka; she tried to capture it but was swept away.

She hugged Brian, gripping so tightly that Brian’s first, laughing words were, “Not so hard, Grandma!”

Overcome, Minka began to shake and nearly stumbled. Ruth and Brian put their arms around her, steadying her. They turned toward Teresa’s camera for a picture.

“The power of God . . . ” Minka said, thinking of the decades of prayer that had led to this very moment.

“Wow,” Teresa said as she lowered the camera and took in the two women. They didn’t look like strangers meeting for the first time. There was something weaving them together, undeniably, right before their eyes.

“How about that,” Brian said.

Grant had been videotaping from the moment Minka came down the walkway. He struggled to keep the camera level as he received hugs and gave welcomes. Emotion was thick in his throat too.

Minka leaned her forehead against Ruth’s face. They held each other.

“This is something, isn’t it,” Ruth said. She beamed. “­Seventy-­seven years.”

Minka’s thoughts bounced back and forth between those perfect days with her newborn daughter at the House of Mercy to Betty Jane at this moment, back to the day of ­good-­bye and now together again.

“You finally got back into your mother’s arms,” Minka said, squeezing her daughter. “It took you long enough,” she gently teased.

Minka gripped the bouquet in one arm, Ruth in the other.

“What a glorious day,” Minka said.

“Yes, it is,” Ruth agreed. “Yes, it is.”

“Well, come in,” Minka said, sighing with contentment. “You might as well get acquainted with your home.”

Ruth went on to forge a sister-like friendship with Minka, who passed away June 16, 2014 at the age of 102. This excerpt was taken from the memoir The Waiting by Cathy LaGrow, daughter of Minka’s second child. Copyright © 2014. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Heartwrenching: This Is What U.S. Soldiers Do to Honor Their Fallen Comrades Overseas

Long before a fallen soldier's family hears the news, his comrades perform a solemn, powerful ceremony: the hero-ramp.

while embedded with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, photographer and war correspondent Robert L. Cunningham witnessed a rare and chilling ritual: the hero-ramp ceremony.

“Robert took this photograph at a forward operating base in eastern Afghanistan, capturing the silence and solemnity of a hero-ramp ceremony,” says author Steven Hartov, who worked alongside Cunningham to publish the 2014 book of photo essays, Afghanistan: On the Bounce.

“Just fallen in combat, draped in an American flag, a soldier passes through a cordon of comrades. This is a moment of secrets kept, for only his warrior brothers and sisters know that he is gone. It will be some time before his wife gasps with the news. His parents and children haven’t yet been informed. Only later will they know that 200 souls wept here with him and served as his most devoted bearers to that final fight.”

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The Husband Who Vanished

For 15 years, Anne McDonnell lived in limbo—not knowing whether her Jim was dead or alive. Then one afternoon the doorbell rang.

The Mc­Donnells lived in a small brick house in Larch­mont, a suburb of New York City. Jim was foreman of mail carriers at the post office where he had worked for 25 years. A gentle, soft­-spoken man, he had a wave­ of­ the ­hand acquaintance with hundreds of peo­ple in town. Married in 1960, he and Anne were childless.

During February and March 1971, when he was 50, Jim McDonnell suffered a curious series of accidents. None was critical in it­self, but the combination appeared to trigger a strange result.

Carrying out the garbage one evening, he slipped on ice­-coated steps, bruised his back and struck his head. A few days later, driving to work, he had a fit of sneezing, lost control of the car, hit a telephone pole and banged his forehead against the windshield. The following day a dizzy spell at work sent him tumbling down a flight of steps, and again he banged his head. Ten days later he again lost control of his car and hit a pole. Found unconscious, he was hospitalized for three days with a cerebral concussion.

On March 29, 1971, Jim borrowed a friend’s station wagon and drove to Kennedy Airport to pick up Anne’s brother and family. Then he took them to Anne’s sister’s house. When he returned the borrowed car at 10 p.m., he was unaware that the leather folder containing his identification had slipped out of his pocket onto the floor of the station wagon. Jim declined the offer of a ride home: “I have a terrible headache and the walk will help clear my head.” Ordinarily the walk would have taken about 15 minutes.

At 11:15 p.m. Anne called the owner of the station wagon; he had no idea why Jim had not yet reached home. It was unlike Jim not to telephone if he was delayed. At 2 a.m., Anne called the police and reported her husband missing.

After 24 hours, the police sent out an all­-points bulletin and began writing some 50 letters to Jim’s friends and relatives. They fol­lowed through on every anonymous tip and even checked unidentified bodies in New York morgues.

Detective George Mulcahy was assigned to head the investigation. He knew Jim was a man of probity and openness—the two attended the same church—and Mulcahy was sure the disappearance had nothing to do with wrong­doing by Jim McDonnell. Investigation confirmed that McDonnell’s per­sonal and professional records were impeccable, and turned up no tendencies toward self­ destruction or any evidence that he had been a victim of an accident or attack.

For Mulcahy, the only explana­tion was amnesia.

The phenomenon of amnesia is clouded in mystery. Why it occurs in some patients and not in oth­ers is open to medical speculation. What is known is that loss of mem­ory can be caused by stroke, Alz­heimer’s disease, alcoholism, severe psychological trauma—or by blows to the head. Any individual whose brain has suffered such inju­ries can simply wander aimlessly away from the place where he lives, with all knowledge of his past blacked out.

“For weeks,” Anne’s sister re­calls, “Anne walked the house wringing her hands and praying. She agreed that Jim could be a victim of amnesia—and she wor­ried about his health. Anne was sustained by her deep trust in God. She felt that one day he would provide an answer.”

Anne remained alone in the house, waiting. At night, watching television, she would stare at the over­stuffed hassock where Jim had dozed off evenings. She often dreamed he had come home, only to wake up and find he wasn’t there.

Soon after Jim’s disappearance Anne realized she had to earn a living. She took babysitting jobs, was a supermarket checker and worked in a hospital cafeteria. In 1977 she took her current job as a nursing attendant.

Anne fell into the habit of work­ing at the hospital on holidays be­cause it was easier if she kept busy. I’ve got to go on, live as best I can, she told herself. Through it all, she had faith that Jim would return. She kept his clothes in the closet covered to protect them from dust. His razor and can of shaving cream remained in the bathroom cabinet.

During his walk home, Jim had indeed blacked out, losing all abili­ty to remember who he was and where he lived. What happened then is unclear. He may have taken the train to Grand Central Termi­nal, then another train or a bus south. The next thing he knew, he was in downtown Philadelphia, a city he had never visited before.

Seeing signs advertising the serv­ices of a James Peters, a real­ estate broker, Jim adopted James Peters as his own name. It never occurred to him to seek assistance at a police station or hospital. He had no past; his only reality was the present.

James Peters got a Social Securi­ty card, which could be obtained at that time without showing a birth certificate, and took a job in the luncheonette of a health club. He next worked at a cancer ­research institute, cleaning out animal cages. He also got a night­shift job at the P&P luncheonette, where he became well­ known for his omelets, as well as his courtesy and good humor. After a year he felt he was estab­lished at P&P and quit his job at the cancer institute.

Jim made new friends, joined an American Legion post and the Knights of Columbus, and became an active member of the St. Hugh Roman Catholic Church.

He never talked about his past, and his friends didn’t pry. One once said to him, “From your accent, you must be from New York.”

Jim replied, “I guess so.”

To Cheryle Sloan, a waitress at P&P, Jim was special: “He loved kids. At Christmastime, he played Santa Claus at orphanages. He grew a big white beard to make his appearance more authentic. Of course we wondered about his past. My mother decided that he had to be an ex-priest or an ex-­criminal.”

Bernadine Golashovsky recalls: “Soon after Jim started at P&P, I took a job there as a waitress. My father had died and Jim apparently had no family, so we adopted each other. He became my father figure, and we—my husband, Pete, our four children and I—were his fam­ily. The children loved him.”

About a month before Christmas 1985, Bernadine noticed that Jim had grown unusually quiet and subdued. Something seemed to be turning in his mind.

On Thanksgiving Day, Jim visit­ed the family and sat watching television with Pete. A scene ap­peared in which a mail carrier was making deliveries on a miserably rainy day. Pete said, “Boy, that’s one job I wouldn’t want.”

Jim frowned and said, “I think I used to be a postman.”

“Really? Where?”

“I don’t know,” Jim answered.

“New York?”

“I’m not sure. But I think I remember my parents a little.”



Jim spent ev­ery major holiday with Bernadine and Pete. On Christmas Eve he always arrived late because the Golashovskys were his last stop on his rounds of wish­ing friends a hap­py holiday. On this Christmas Eve he never ar­rived. Bernadine and Pete stayed up all night waiting for him.

On December 22, Jim had fall­en and banged his head. The next day at work he seemed distracted, and late that afternoon he had fallen again, striking his head. On De­cember 24, he awoke feeling confused, yet elated. After almost 15 years, he knew who he was! He was James A. McDonnell, Jr., of Larchmont, New York. His wife’s name was Anne. Then, suddenly, he was scared: Is Anne alive? Has she remarried? If not, how will she greet me?

Anne had just returned home from Christmas Mass, where she lit candles and prayed for Jim. A light snow was falling, and she was in a hurry to leave for Christmas dinner at her sister’s before the roads grew slick.

Then the doorbell rang, Oh, my she thought, this is not a good time for a visitor.

Anne opened the door—and peered at a man with a full white beard. Immedi­ately she recog­nized Jim. She couldn’t speak.

To Jim, Anne looked a little older, but pretti­er too. His heart overflowed.

“Hello, Anne,” he said.

“Jim,” she gasped. “Is it true?” Her breathing came in bursts, as if she had been running. “Oh, I’m glad you’re home. Come in, come in.” They barely touched hands. They were too stunned to fall into each other’s arms. The embraces and the tears would come later.

Anne led Jim to his favorite seat, the over­stuffed hassock. They be­gan to talk, trying to fill in the gaps in time. Finally, Jim’s eyes grew heavy. Exhausted and happy, he dozed off.

After 15 years, Jim McDonnell was home at last.

On the day after Christmas, Jim reported his return to the police. That evening the Golashovskys received a phone call from a New York Daily News reporter who told them Jim was fine. Bernadine phoned Jim’s friends with the good news.

A week after his return Jim had a complete physical, including a CAT scan of his brain. The conclusion: he was in normal health, Jim and Anne have had no prob­lems resuming their lives as a married couple. “Each day we are together,” Jim says, “makes the time we were apart seem shorter.”

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This Man Ordered Domino’s Pizza Almost Daily For 10 Years. It Just Might Have Saved His Life.

When Kirk Alexander went missing for 11 days, an unlikely savior came to his rescue: his neighborhood pizza store.

Almost every night for more than 10 years, Kirk Alexander, 48, of Salem, Oregon ordered a late dinner from his local Domino’s pizza store. He had no signature order—sometimes he would call for a salad, sometimes a pie, sometimes chicken wings—the only sure thing for the staff of the Silverton Road Domino’s was that they would see Alexander’s name show up on their online ordering site sometime between 11 p.m. and midnight several times a week.

Until suddenly, for nearly two weeks at the end of April 2016, they didn’t.

It was a slow Saturday night on May 7th when Domino’s general manager Sarah Fuller felt she could no longer ignore Alexander’s recent absence.

“A few of my drivers had mentioned that we hadn’t seen his order come across our screen in a while, so I went and looked up to see how long it had been since he last ordered,” Fuller told KATU.com. “It was 11 days, which is not like him at all.”

Fuller had known Alexander since 2009, when she started at the Domino’s store as a delivery driver and regularly made the short trip to Alexander’s home about six minutes away. She knew Alexander worked from home, and neighbors said he rarely left. She also knew that he had suffered some health issues in the past. Something, Fuller worried, was wrong.

Around 1 a.m. on Sunday, May 8, Fuller sent longtime delivery driver Tracey Hamblen to stop in at Alexander’s home. Hamblen approached Alexander’s door as he had countless times before and knocked. He could plainly see that Alexander’s TV set was on, as were his lights; but after several minutes, Alexander still didn’t answer the door.

Seriously worried now, Hamblen called Alexander directly. His phone went straight to voicemail.

Hamblen rushed back to the store to relay the upsetting developments to Fuller. While she tried to reach the authorities on a non-emergency number, she encouraged Hamblen to dial 911. Soon, officers were on their way.

When deputies from the Marion County Sheriff’s office arrived at Alexander’s house, they heard a man “calling for help from inside the residence,” deputies said. They broke the door down, and found Alexander on the floor “in need of immediate medical attention.” One day later, and they might have been too late.

Alexander was rushed to Salem Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition shortly after Sunday’s dramatic rescue. In the following weeks, Fuller, Hamblen, and other store employees went to visit him with flowers and cards, noting that Alexander greeted them with knowing smiles. Their role in his rescue did not seem lost on Alexander, though to Fuller, it was all just part of the job.

“[Alexander is] just an important customer that’s part of our family here at Domino’s,” she told KOIN.com “He orders all the time so we know him. I think we were just doing our job checking in on someone we know who orders a lot. We felt like we needed to do something.”

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How Presidents Met Their First Ladies: 10 True Love Stories to Make You Say ‘Awww’

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

In 1758 Martha Dandridge Curtis was 27 and recently widowed, and a very wealthy woman. That year George Washington, also 27 and already a colonel in the Virginia militia (and not at all wealthy) met Martha via the Virginia high-society social scene and proceeded to court her. Courtship was quick, and they were married in January 1759, in what at the time was viewed as a marriage of convenience. They were, however, happily married for 41 years. (Note: The marriage took place at the plantation that Martha owned, in what was called the “White House.”)

When Johnny Met Louisa

Louisa Catherine Johnson, who was born in London, met John Quincy Adams at her home in Nantes, France, in 1779. She was 4; he was 12. Adams was traveling with his father, John Adams, who was on a diplomatic mission in Europe. The two met again in 1795 in London, when John was a minister to the Netherlands. He courted her, all the while telling her she’d have to improve herself if she was going to live up to his family’s standards (his father was vice president at the time). She married him anyway, in 1797, and his family made it no secret that they disapproved of the “foreigner” in their family. Nevertheless, they were married until John Quincy Adams’s death in 1848. Louisa remains the only foreign-born First Lady in U.S. history.

When Johnny Met Louisa

Louisa Catherine Johnson, who was born in London, met John Quincy Adams at her home in Nantes, France, in 1779. She was 4; he was 12. Adams was traveling with his father, John Adams, who was on a diplomatic mission in Europe. The two met again in 1795 in London, when John was a minister to the Netherlands. He courted her, all the while telling her she’d have to improve herself if she was going to live up to his family’s standards (his father was vice president at the time). She married him anyway, in 1797, and his family made it no secret that they disapproved of the “foreigner” in their family. Nevertheless, they were married until John Quincy Adams’s death in 1848. Louisa remains the only foreign-born First Lady in U.S. history.

When Gracie Met Calvin

One day in 1903, Grace Anna Goodhue was watering flowers outside the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she taught. At some point, she looked up and saw a man through the open window of a boardinghouse across the street. He was shaving, his face covered with lather, and dressed in his long johns. He was also wearing a hat. Grace burst out laughing, and the man turned to look at her. That was the first meeting of Grace and Calvin Coolidge. They were married two years later.

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When Harry Met Bessie

In 1890, when they were both small children, Harry Truman met Bess Wallace at the Baptist Church in Independence, Missouri. They were both attending Sunday school. He was six; she was five. Truman later wrote of their first meeting: “We made a number of new acquaintances, and I became interested in one in particular. She had golden curls and has, to this day, the most beautiful blue eyes. We went to Sunday school, public school from the fifth grade through high school, graduated in the same class, and marched down life’s road together. For me she still has the blue eyes and golden hair of yesteryear.” Bess and Harry were married in 1919.

When Lyndie Met Lady Bird

Lyndon Baines Johnson met Claudia “Lady Bird” Taylor in 1934, a few weeks after she’d graduated from the University of Texas. Johnson was a 26-year-old aide to Texas congressman Richard Kleberg, and was in Austin, Texas, on business. They went on a single breakfast date, at the end of which Johnson proposed marriage. She said she’d think about it. He returned to Washington, and sent her letters and telegrams every day until he returned to Austin 10 weeks later, when she accepted. “Sometimes,” she later wrote about her husband, “Lyndon simply takes your breath away.”

 When Richie Met Pattie

Thelma “Pat” Ryan graduated from the University of Southern California in 1937 at the age of 25. She got a job as a high school teacher in Whittier, a small town not far from Los Angeles, and became a member of the amateur theatrical group the Whittier Community Players. In 1938 Richard Nixon, a 26-year-old lawyer who had just opened a firm in nearby La Habra, joined the theater group, thinking that acquiring acting skills would help him in the courtroom. In their first performance, Nixon was cast opposite Ryan. He asked her out, and asked her to marry him on their first date. They were married three years later.

When Ronnie Met Nancy

Ronald Reagan wrote in his autobiography that he first met Nancy Davis when she came to him for help. He was president of the Screen Actors Guild, and she couldn’t get a job acting in movies because another Nancy Davis’s name had shown up on the Hollywood blacklist of alleged communists. But according to Jon Weiner’s book Professors, Politics, and Pop, SAG records show that Nancy’s blacklist problem occurred in 1953, a year after the Reagans were married. So how did they meet? Reagan biographer Anne Edwards says that in 1949 Nancy, who had just become an MGM contract player, told a friend of Reagan’s that she wanted to meet him. The friend invited the two to a small dinner party, and the rest is history.

When Georgie Met Laura

Joe and Jan O’Neill lived in Midland, Texas, and were childhood friends of Laura Welch. In 1975 another childhood friend, George W. Bush, came back to Midland after being away for a few years. The O’Neills bugged Laura to go out with George, but she didn’t want to. She later said that the O’Neills were only trying to get them together “because we were the only two people from that era in Midland who were still single.” She finally agreed to meet him at a backyard barbecue in 1977, when she was 30 and he was 31. George was smitten;Laura was, too. They were married three months later.

When Barry Met Michelle

In 1989 Michelle Robinson was working at a Chicago law firm when she was assigned to mentor a summer associate from Harvard with a “strange name”: Barack Obama. Not long after, Barack, 27, asked Michelle, 25, on a date. She later admitted that she was reluctant to date one of the few black men at the large firm because it seemed “tacky.” Robinson finally relented, and after dating for several months, she suggested they get married. He wasn’t interested. One night in 1991, during dinner at a Chicago restaurant, she brought it up again. Again, he said no. But when dessert showed up, there was an engagement ring in a box on one of the plates. They were married in 1992.

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