During superstorm Sandy in late October 2012, 28-year-old Mike Iann of Ridgefield, N.J., spent hours treading water when he was sucked into Barnegat Bay after waves tore off the back of his home.
Mr. Iann couldn’t swim back to his house, but he was able to make it to a neighbor’s home (the owners had evacuated before the storm). Exhausted, cold, thirsty, and thinking he was near death, Iann broke into the home.
He took blankets from the couch, and a black coat, and in the middle of the night wrote a desperate note to the homeowners apologizing for breaking in, telling them he had hypothermia and was dying, and asking them to call his father.
According to the Huffington Post he wrote, "I don’t think I’m going to make it. The water outside is 10 feet deep at least. There’s no res[c]ue. Tell my dad I love him and I tryed get[t]ing out.” Iann also left his father’s phone number.
The next morning Iann was rescued by a man on a jet-ski.
When homeowners Vick and Christine Treflia returned after the storm they found Iann’s note, but had no idea what had happened to him. They posted the note on the Internet, where it went viral, and caught the eye of a local radio station host.
Justin Louis of WOBM called the number on the note and managed to connect with Iann’s father, Tony Iann; he discovered that Iann had made it. Local reporters put together the rest of the pieces of the story.
"I would have done the same thing, had it been me," Mr. Treflia told WPVI, an ABC station in Philadelphia. "So if my house helped him to make it through this nightmare, so be it."
