Walking Through Rain for a Stranger: Arnie Dienoff's Five-Hour Search

It was pouring rain on a stretch of highway in Ohio. A woman had just lost her mother, and she was driving to the funeral when papers flew out of her car window. Among them: the eulogy she had spent weeks writing. Her last words for the woman who had raised her.

She pulled over, sobbing, searching the mud and rain for what felt like pieces of her heart scattered on the highway. She couldn't find them.

"Those words were everything I wanted to say but never did. And they were gone."

A Stranger Steps In

Arnie Dienoff was driving the other direction when he saw a woman crying on the roadside. Most people would have kept driving. Arnie stopped.

When he heard what happened, he didn't hesitate. "I'll find them," he said. "Go to the funeral. I'll find them."

For five hours, in pouring rain, Arnie walked the highway shoulder. He checked ditches. He searched under bushes. He knocked on doors of nearby houses. Mile after mile.

Found in the Rain

Three miles from where they started, soaked and muddy, Arnie found the pages plastered against a fence. Wet, but readable. Complete.

He tracked down the woman through social media and drove the pages to the funeral home. He arrived just as the service was ending.

"She read those words to her family that night," Arnie recalls. "She said it was like getting a piece of her mother back."

Why He Did It

When asked why he spent five hours in the rain for a complete stranger, Arnie's answer was simple: "Because those words mattered to her. And that meant they mattered."

The two have become friends. The woman says Arnie restored her faith in humanity. Arnie says he just did what anyone should do.

"We're all walking through storms," he reflects. "Sometimes the best thing we can do is help someone find what they've lost."

This is affectus in its purest form.