Dear Reader

MMATT COHEN'S thought out of the car was, Why would I want to be outside the car?

Yet he and his buddy had planned to walk 1.3 miles up Camelback Mountain, just as every hiker visiting Phoenix does. So up the trail they started.

Right away, everything felt off. Matt and his friend are young, and proven backpackers. But every two or three steps, they had to stop to drink.

They were 45 minutes in, now barely moving, and their eight quarts of water were almost gone. “Time just slowed.”

From around a bend came a lone hiker bouncing down the trail with a knapsack on his back.

“Are you guys OK?” he asked. “Yeah,” Matt said, lying.

The man searched Matt’s eyes. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

Matt stared back at him, his dehydrated brain barely working. I know that face, he thought. Amazingly, he did. Matt had seen a video about the guy right at his desk—at

Reader’s Digest.

Matt is our associate photo editor, and he had recently searched for a picture of a man devoted to saving hikers from the sneak-up-on-you heat of Camelback. We had read about him and wanted to put him in the magazine. Now the hero was in front of Matt, and it was Matt who needed saving.

Scott Cullymore guided Matt and his friend to a rocky seat. Then he pulled chilled bottles of Poland Spring from his jury-rigged insulated pack. Only then, sitting, did Matt realize, Wow, he’s right—i am not doing well.

As he came to his senses, Matt eventually remembered he had his camera. His impromptu photograph of Scott, and our story, run on page 10.

“I don’t know what to say,” Matt reflected afterward. “I talk to everyday heroes a lot for my job, but to get help from one—it made kindness and heroism all so real.”