Heroic teen shows inner strength.(The Goodness Of America)

Justin Gregorich of Safety Harbor, Florida, attends Countryside High School in nearby Clearwater. The 14-year-old freshman stands just 5'3" tall and weighs only 130 pounds, yet hopes to make the school's junior-varsity football team.

On January 28, Justin attended a team conditioning practice but could not lift as much weight as others in the weightroom. Reportedly, some of the other boys teased him about his lack of strength. Dejected, Justin left the practice early.

Usually, Justin would have called his mother for a ride home, but that day he decided to walk. He told the next day's St. Petersburg Times, "The weird thing was, I didn't really want to leave football. I just left because I got this urge."

On the way, Justin began having second thoughts about abandoning the practice. "I'm thinking, man, aw, I should have stayed at football, the coach is going to be mad at me, why did I leave?" Just then a few hundred yards ahead of Justin, a car veered off the road, crashed through a chain-link fence, struck a drainage culvert, and then plunged into a retention pond near the Clearwater-Safety Harbor border. The car began sinking, grille first, with the elderly driver, Raymond Kane, trapped inside.

Justin recalled for the Times how he began yelling for someone to call 911, "Then I was like, I gotta save that guy." Setting down his backpack and removing some of his clothing, Justin traversed the damaged section of the nearly six-foot fence and ran to the pond. Two other passersby, Michael McBrayer and Shawn Brady of Dunedin, also stopped to help. The trio dove into the pond and swam some 50 feet to the sinking vehicle.

With the front half of the car submerged, Kane had crawled into the back seat. When his rescuers ...