Like so many heroes, Anthony Zhongor did not set out to save a life that night. He was simply in the right place, at the right time.
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The 17-year-old high school senior from Patchogue, New York was sitting in his car next to Long Island bay at around 10 p.m. when suddenly, a fellow teen in a Subaru Outback made a potentially deadly mistake.
Mia Samolinski attends the same school as Anthony, but the two had never met. That night, their paths crossed in the most remarkable way.
Mia had just gotten into her car and was about to drive away, but she hit the gas instead of the brake. Security footage shows the car hopping over a sidewalk, hitting a trash can, and then plunging into the dark, cold water of the bay in just a few short seconds. People rushed to look in the water, but only one person jumped in after Mia, and it was Anthony.
“She went pretty deep in there,” the teenager recalled. “She was banging on the door, banging on the window, trying to break the window, of course, and that kind of got me nervous, scared for her, so I just took my clothes off and went into the water.”
Mia’s car began to sink rapidly, but she couldn’t get the doors or windows open. Anthony tried to get the doors open from the outside, but couldn’t quite manage it. As the seconds ticked by, the teenage hero realized he could use his own body weight to push down the heavy front end of the car, making the rear end stick out of the water. Mia scrambled into the back and managed to escape through the rear hatch. She and Anthony swam to shore together. As soon as they were safe, a tearful Mia thanked Anthony profusely for saving her.
“It doesn’t matter who it was, they were suffering,” he said. “I couldn’t watch anybody suffer in front of me.”
The next day, Mia’s dad Charles met with Anthony to thank him for taking quick action to save his daughter.
“He jumped out of his car and jumped in, and because of that, my daughter is alive and and not really harmed,” he said. “It’s a miracle.”
Anthony graduates this year in 2022 and has enlisted in the Marines, which sounds like the perfect career choice for such a brave young man! We’re so grateful that he was there when Mia needed him.
Share this story to wish this hero well as he starts the next phase of his life.
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