Everyone laughed when they sent an eighty-year-old man and his eighteen-year-old wife off to spend their wedding night together. “Let’s see if Grandpa can make it until morning,” one relative joked through a burst of laughter. He didn’t respond. He simply picked up his old briefcase and closed the door. When six relatives opened it the next morning, they stopped laughing when they discovered what he had been protecting all night.

Chloe’s mother had abandoned the family when she was just a small child, and there were no surviving siblings or close relatives left who could step in to take care of the young girl.

One afternoon, feeling his body grow weaker, Thomas called Walter on the phone.

The two men had known each other intimately since 1985, when they both participated in dangerous search and rescue efforts following a devastating earthquake.

Walter, who was an engineering officer at the time, had personally pulled Thomas from the rubble of a partially collapsed concrete building.

Years later, during a severe landslide emergency, Thomas returned the favor by preventing a massive falling beam from crushing Walter.

From that day forward, the two men had bonded deeply and referred to each other as brothers.