Photo: Getty Images
Last week, a bus of U.S. Marines helped a woman stranded in her car during a heavy rainstorm in Washington, D.C. Virginia Waller-Torres was driving near Arlington National Cemetary when her vehicle stalled as the floodwaters quickly rose around her.
Luckily for Waller-Torres, a bus transporting the Marine Corps Body Bearers from a funeral happened to be nearby. Six Marines, in full-dress uniforms, waded through the knee-high water and managed to push her car down the road to drier ground. Just as they got her vehicle underneath an overpass, police officers showed up to help.
Waller-Torres was recording her rescue and shared the video on TikTok.
"Marine power," she can be heard yelling in the video. "This is so cool. Oh my God, this is the most American thing ever."
A few days later, Waller-Torres got a chance to meet her rescuers and thank them for their assistance.
"It was like they were sent from somewhere else, from a higher power," Virginia Waller-Torres said, according to WUSA. "I thought I could die, a truck could hit us. And it was as though somebody heard me."
"It was something so different. It was something that I can't explain in words," she added. "I am so grateful. Thank you."
Corporal Jared Tosner downplayed their heroics, saying that helping people is part of the job.
"Definitely didn't do it for attention or views or anything like that. Just trying to do the right thing when no one's watching. In this case, somebody was recording, but it was cool to see the positivity that sparked from it," Tosner told WTTG. "We're all pretty like-minded group of individuals, not just as Body Bearers, just as Marines and service members. More or less, we just want to lend a helping hand and be good to one another."