Strasburg, Colorado — When Stephanie Peabody started looking through the security footage taken from her garage camera in Strasburg, Colorado, she was trying to piece together what exactly happened that February night.
Eventually, she not only found the answer, but the surprise of a lifetime.
It all started when Stephanie and her husband left their 3-year-old son Bridger with his great-grandmother, 78-year-old Sharon Lewis.
Bridger and his grandmother were walking into the Peabody home when Lewis tripped and hit her head on a concrete step. She couldn’t get up, she was bleeding profusely, and she had left her phone in the car.
First, they tried yelling for help from the neighbors, but that did not work.
The only solution was for Bridger to return to Lewis’ car and get her phone.
“He (Bridger) said, ‘GG, they don’t hear us,'” Lewis recounted to CBS News. “I said, ‘I know, so you’re going to have to go get my phone.'”
It was nighttime, and the path back to the car wasn’t lit. It was in total darkness.
“I was a lot afraid,” Bridger told CBS News. “…It’s too dark.”
“The dark is just a frightful thing for a little guy,” Lewis said.
That was when Bridger whispered to himself these three little words caught on security video: “Don’t be afraid.”
Up to that point, Bridger had never even opened a car door, let alone faced such a life-and-death challenge.
But he was able to courageously make his way to Lewis’ car and open the door. The darkness was defeated.
“I was so proud of him,” Peabody said of her son.
It’s been about three months since that accident. Lewis has healed, and new lights were installed in the backyard. But perhaps, the most significant change has been the family’s new fearless attitudes.
Peabody said the incident has inspired her to pursue a career in special education.
“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but now it’s like taking the chance to do it: ‘Don’t be afraid,'” Peabody said. “I have it tattooed on my arm.”
It’s a reminder for the child inside all of us. Sometimes, true courage is being afraid and charging into the darkness anyway.
Steve Hartman is a CBS News correspondent. He brings viewers moving stories from the unique people he meets in his weekly award-winning feature segment “On the Road.”
An officer rescued a woman from a burning car. He later learned they had a personal connection. – CBS News
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Video shows a police officer in Phoenix helping to rescue a driver from their burning car after a crash. After realizing the driver’s side door was stuck, the officer retrieved a tool to smash the window. He later learned the woman he saved was the daughter of a fellow first responder.
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Flash floods sparked by heavy rain hit parts of Virginia, western Maryland and Pennsylvania on Tuesday, leaving a 12-year-old boy missing in Virginia and forcing elementary schools in rural Maryland to evacuate, authorities said.
Severe flooding has left parts of Meyersdale Borough in Somerset County underwater after heavy rains pounded the area on Tuesday.
In a message posted Tuesday night on social media, the Albemarle County Fire Rescue service in Virginia said county police had received a call late in the afternoon about a boy being swept away by a flood-swollen creek. The fire department said search efforts had to be put on hold after about three hours, “due to limited visibility in the overnight hours and the safety of all those involved.”
The fire and rescue service said the search would resume on Wednesday, and it warned residents not to “self-deploy” in attempt to find the missing child as conditions remained dangerous.
Another elementary school in the region was also evacuated, and students at a middle school were told to shelter in place for a while on Tuesday, according to the Allegany County Department of Emergency Services.
Homes flooded in southern Pennsylvania
Residents in low-lying areas of Meyersdale, near the Maryland border in Pennsylvania’s Somerset County, were ordered to evacuate Tuesday as the Casselman River rose precipitously.
“We are seeing flooding in the majority of the houses in town,” Meyersdale Mayor Shane Smith said, according to KDKA, CBS Pittsburgh. “Some even as high as the first floor. Roads throughout the area are being destroyed by the fast-moving water… This is some of the most severe flooding we’ve ever seen.”
Smith declared a state of emergency for Meyersdale. He said there were no reported injuries, and that both federal and state emergency management personnel were expected in the town on Wednesday to help coordinate the response.
There were also reports of flood and storm related road closures and some damage in Bedford and Campbell Counties in Virginia, and a hospital being partially flooded in eastern Tennessee, near the Virginia state line. Authorities said two women had to be rescued from an inundated vehicle on a washed out road in Bedford
Rural western Maryland schools forced to evacuate
About 100 miles north, in the far western corner of Maryland, the North Branch Potomac River and some tributaries burst their banks on Tuesday, forcing the evacuation of schools and businesses.
An aerial photo shows the flooded downtown area of Westernport, Maryland, May 13, 2025.
Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post/Getty
According to KDKA, about 150 students and 50 adults had to be evacuated from the Westernport Elementary School. The floodwaters rose so quickly and entered the building that brothers William and Quinton Wade were left trapped inside with dozens of others.
“Whenever we were going down to get in the boat, the first floor was flooded,” Quinton, a second-grader at the school, told KDKA.
“The first floor had been flooded all the way to the ceiling,” added William, who is in fourth grade.
“I didn’t get any call from the school. I didn’t know any plan. I didn’t know anything. So, my instinct was, get my kids,” the boys’ mother Alley Wade told KDKA. She said she rushed from her job to the school, but found the water too high for her to do anything, so she waited while the rescuers in boats saved her kids and dozens of others.
Alley Wade said she had never seen such severe flooding in their town.
“I have never. Now, I believe there was a bad flood in 1996, but I was 4,” she said.
Officials said about 150 students and 50 adults had to be evacuated from the flooded Westernport Elementary School in western Maryland, May 13, 2025.
Handout
While the Wades’ home was unscathed, some homes and businesses in Westernport were inundated Tuesday after hours of heavy rain.
In a statement released in the early Wednesday morning hours, Maryland Governor Wes Moore urged people in the affected region to “remain vigilant, heed warnings from local officials, and prioritize safety during this time,” adding: “If you don’t have to go out, please do not go out. Stay off the roads if possible and heed any evacuation orders.”
According to the governor’s office, parts of Allegany County had already seen at least 4.65 inches of rain in 24 hours, and more rain was expected into Wednesday morning.
The statement said the North Branch Potomac River in Cumberland was expected to peak at 22.6 feet Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, “which would mark the highest river crest since 1996.”
“We remain in close contact with local officials and continue to coordinate resources as the rain continues to fall,” Moore said in the statement.
The flooding comes on the heels of a new study by the climate science group World Weather Attribution, published this week, that found deadly storms that tore through eight U.S. states in the Midwest and South in the first week of April, killing at least 24 people, were made significantly worse by human-caused climate change.
Tucker Reals is CBSNews.com’s foreign editor, based in the CBS News London bureau. He has worked for CBS News since 2006, prior to which he worked for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C., and London.
Five fishermen who spent 55 days adrift at sea arrived Saturday at a port in the Galapagos Islands after being rescued by a tuna boat, the Ecuadorian navy said on X.
The three Peruvians and two Colombians had been missing since mid-March and were found on May 7 by an Ecuadorian boat called Aldo.
Vladimir González, 32, José Albines , 52, José Gabriel Albines, 31, and Jhonny García Jorge Ugarte, 40, arrived at the San Cristobal Navy Base in the morning and their conditions were stable, the navy said.
The fishermen had reported damage to the boat’s alternator two days after setting sail from Pucusana Bay, to the south of Peru’s capital Lima, the navy said in a separate post on Friday.
The navy said it is coordinating with local and foreign authorities to ensure their safe return to their respective countries.
The Ecuadorian Navy transported 5 fisherman lost at sea for 55 days to their base at the Galapagos Islands.
Armada del Ecuador
Earlier this year, another Peruvian fisherman, 61-year-old Máximo Napa, spent 95 days at sea alone. He was also rescued by an Ecuadorian vessel and returned to Lima mid-March to be reunited with his family.
Napa told local media he survived the ordeal at sea by eating cockroaches, birds and turtles, according to Agence France-Presse.
Several dramatic rescues have been made at sea. In October, Russian Mikhail Pichugin was rescued after spending more than two months adrift in a small inflatable boat, drinking rainwater in the Sea of Okhotsk, off the coast of Russia. His brother and nephew died while at sea and he tied their bodies to the boat to prevent them from being washed away.
In 2023, Australian sailor Tim Shaddock survived more than two months lost at sea with his dog, Bella. The pair were sailing from Mexico to French Polynesia, the 51-year-old said, when rough seas damaged their boat and its electronics system, leaving them adrift and cut off from the world.
