He was driving home from a delivery. Then he saw the flames. Nobody else was around. So he ran in.
It was 12:30 in the morning on July 11, 2022.

Nick Bostic, 25, was behind the wheel in Lafayette, Indiana — just another late night pizza delivery run winding down. Then he saw a house completely engulfed in flames. No sirens in the distance. No emergency crews.
He stopped the car. And ran inside.

He entered through the back door, yelling into the smoke to see if anyone was home. He pressed deeper into the darkness, crawling through heat — with only one working eye, blind in the other since childhood.

Upstairs he found four children — an 18-year-old girl babysitting her younger siblings, a toddler, and two 13-year-olds. He got them out through the back door into the night air.
Then someone said the words that stopped his heart.
There’s still one inside.
Six-year-old Kaylani. Location unknown.
Nick wrapped his shirt around his face and went back in.

The smoke was so thick he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. The heat was getting worse by the second. He crawled along the floor, deeper into the burning house, following the only thing he could — the sound of a little girl crying.

He found her near the living room.

He picked her up, ran back upstairs into a room filling with smoke and flames, and punched through a second-floor window with his bare fist. Kaylani’s leg got caught in the window blind cord. He untangled her, pulled her close like a football, and jumped.

When police arrived and found Nick on the ground — injured, burned, barely breathing — he didn’t ask for help for himself. He just kept asking one question: “Is the little girl okay?”
Kaylani had a minor cut on her leg.

Nick was airlifted to Indianapolis in critical condition — severe smoke inhalation, first and second degree burns, and a deep laceration from the window glass. He spent three days in the hospital.

He was awarded the Carnegie Medal — the highest civilian honor for heroism in the United States. A GoFundMe raised over $600,000. Countries around the world ran his story.