An elderly woman is rescued from rising flood waters. I'd seen her stuck and grabbed a couple shots before shouldering the camera and rolling my pants up to go get her. But as I waded in, I saw this truck driver stop and begin towards her, too. So I stayed with shooting and captured this image.

This was a day I wasn't working and the paper I worked for at the time, a weekly, had just come out the day before. So I knew the shot would be old news come the next week. As luck would have it, a stringer for The Philadelphia Inquirer showed up at the scene late and asked if I had gotten anything. When I said I had, he suggested I show it to the local "Inky" bureau chief, which I did since there was no policy at my paper to restrict it. He said he'd sent it in to the main paper and that I'd get $50 if it was used inside or $100 if it was used on a section front.

The next morning I wake up to the phone ringing and a friend asks if I've seen the Inquirer yet, that my boss has and he's royally pissed! "Oh? Did they use my image," I asked. Turns out they did, 5-columns big at the top of the front page with photo credit attached! Rut-roh!

I head into work and expect the managing editor to fry me -- a co-worker met me at the door warning that Bob (the ME) said he was going to hang my ass from the ceiling over this. So I go to my desk and wait to be called into his office ... and wait ... and wait. At around noon I get tired of waiting so I go in and tell him I heard he had a problem with me and the image. "Did you use your own film for it," he asked. Yes. "Did you know we don't have a policy against doing this?" Yes. "Well we will have tomorrow, so don't ever do it again!" Okay.

That was it!

Well, except that the "Inky" ended up paying me $200 for the shot and The Associated Press bought it later that day for $400! And the co-worker who met me at the door that morning? He asked me to turn around at one point in the day after the boss was away and said "Hmmm ... looks okay from being hung from the ceiling!"