Back-to-Back Heroic Acts by a Transit Officer

This is an unbelievable story. Houston Metro Officer Eliot Swainson was in Washington, DC this week, deputized to help with the large crowds for the inauguration. On Tuesday, he saved a 68-year-old woman woman who fell on the subway tracks, by quickly tucking her under a platform seconds before a train arrived.

Wait, it gets better. The next day, after he was leaving an interview about the heroic train rescue, he and two Washington transit officers noticed smoke pouring from a nearby row house. They were the first on the scene, alerted firefighters and then began to help people get out of the building.

> Read the Full Story Here

My favorite part comes at the end:

...he couldn't resist playing along when a reporter asked whether -- like Superman -- he was wearing a shirt with a giant letter "S" beneath his uniform. "Well, it's 'Swainson,' " he said, laughing. "So, it's always there."

It takes a special type of person to impulsively act like that - to jump in harm's way to save another life. Thank you Mr. Swainson for being sublimely good!

Watch Swainson talk about the subway train rescue:

107-year-old: 'Nothing but the Greatest!' Day

Ann Nixon Cooper is 107 and lives in Atlanta. As she watched the inauguration yesterday, she said,"This moment in history marks one of the greatest days of her event-filled life." I can't even begin to imagine. Her grandson was with her too and said "he was proud to share this moment with his grandmother. 'She's gone from oil lamps ... to cell phones, from horse and buggies to spaceships. She's seen it all.'"

At the end of the speech, Jeff Cooper [another grandson] hugged her and kissed her cheek. "Grandma, how does it feel to have a black president?"

"I'm so happy," she said.

She said she remembers the days when she couldn't vote and was subjected to racial slurs and injustices. "There was a time when they thought they could just kick us around," she said. "Now, it has changed."

In Obama's victory speech in November, he praised Cooper's fight. "She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin. (from CNN)"

Amazing. This woman has lived a long and fruitful life - she even knew Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was a boy! She also co-founded a Girls Club for African-American youth and taught community residents to read in a tutoring program at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached. Read about her here.

You can also watch her: