During the height of Hurricane Sandy, Mike was sucked out into Barnegat Bay when ferocious waves tore off the back of his Toms River home.
He made one desperate call to his father before that.
"I was just thinking, 'I have to see my dad again. I have to see my family again. I can't die like this. I can't give up. I can't,'" he said.
Mike treaded water for hours in the churned up bay, then made his way to a house nearby, where he broke in and warmed up with the blankets on a couch.
"I would have done the same thing, had it been me," said homeowner Vick Treflia. "So if my house helped him to make it through this nightmare, so be it."
With conditions worsening, and in the pitch dark, Mike scratched out a note saying, "I don't think I'm going to make it. There's no rescue. Tell my dad I love him and I tried getting out."
But Mike Iann survived the storm and the next morning was picked up on a jet-ski by Frank Vincendese, who brought him to his house, where the traumatized and frozen man warmed himself by the stove.
"Just the shape he was in, it was hard to imagine how he even survived," said Vincendese. "I was amazed the more he told of what he'd been through, that he actually made it to the next morning."
One lucky man, indeed. An incredible story, and he is alive today to tell about it.
