A woman whose Mini Cooper got stuck on the flooded streets of Virginia filmed a group of uniformed Marines as they pushed her car to safety in the rain. She later shared the footage on TikTok, where it amassed over 4 million views.
Artist Virginia Waller-Torres ran into trouble outside Arlington National Cemetery on Sept. 16, amid a flash flood warning. Luckily for her, a group of Marine Corps Body Bearers that was leaving a 3 p.m. funeral service rushed to her aid.
“Marine power!” Waller-Torres is heard saying. “This is the most American thing ever!”
Corporal Jared Tosner weighed in, saying the Marines were “just trying to do the right thing when no one was watching. In this case, somebody was recording,” he said, “but it was cool to see the positivity that sparked from it.”
Describing his comrades as a “likeminded group of individuals,” he added, “More or less, we just want to lend a helping hand and be good to one another.”
Waller-Torres reunited with Wojtowicz and Tosner at the Marine Corps barracks in Southeast Washington four days after the rescue. She hugged and high-fived both humble heroes before being presented with a gold challenge coin.
Her heroes hadn’t known it at the time, but Waller-Torres hails from a military family herself. Her father was in the Navy, and her grandfather, a Second World War veteran, is buried at Arlington in the very same cemetery the Marines emerged from during the Sept. 16 flood.
“I sent [my father] the video and he called me back, and he started crying because it was so emotional for him,” the artist said, equally as moved as her father.
