  Waves traveling through random media exhibit random focusing that leads to
extremely high wave intensities even in the absence of nonlinearities. Although
such extreme events are present in a wide variety of physical systems and the
statistics of the highest waves is important for their analysis and forecast,
it remains poorly understood in particular in the regime where the waves are
highest. We suggest a new approach that greatly simplifies the mathematical
analysis and calculate the scaling and the distribution of the highest waves
valid for a wide range of parameters.
