Sometimes achieving a goal requires years of hard work, discipline, and persistence. Other times, survival itself depends on nothing but pure chance.
Yet in both cases, one factor is impossible to ignore: luck.
This story is a haunting reminder of how a single moment of fortune can separate safety from tragedy.
My wife and I were returning from a late-night party around 2 a.m. when our car suddenly died in the middle of a remote stretch of road. This was before mobile phones were common, and there were no houses, no lights, and no passing traffic—just darkness and silence.
We waited.
An hour passed. Then another.
Finally, a car appeared in the distance. A young man who looked like a college student pulled over and asked if we needed help. Relieved, we explained our situation. Without hesitation, he offered to drive us into town.
During the ride, he was polite, calm, even friendly. When we reached our destination, we tried to give him some money, but he waved it away with a smile and said,
“Happy to help.”
We thanked him, thinking we had just met a kind stranger.
Years later, my wife called me, her voice trembling.
“Please open the news,” she said. “Right now.”
I did—and my stomach dropped.
The man who had once rescued us wasn’t a college student at all. He was a 35-year-old criminal who had robbed more than thirty people in forests and isolated areas, mostly targeting drivers late at night. He was wanted in several states.
His methods were chillingly clever. Sometimes he posed as a lost hiker and asked for a lift. Other times, he would pick people up in his own car, gain their trust, then rob them at knifepoint and abandon them miles away from civilization.
The face on the screen was the same face that had smiled at us. The same voice that had said, “Happy to help.”
To this day, we don’t know why he didn’t rob us.
Maybe it was because there were two of us. Maybe it was because I was tall and muscular and he decided we weren’t worth the risk. Or maybe, for reasons we’ll never understand, he simply chose not to that night.
Whatever the reason, one truth remains:
We weren’t saved by planning.
We weren’t saved by strength.
We were saved by luck.
