Dozens walk past dying homeless hero

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/24/hugo-alfredo-tale-yax-doz_n_550854.html

This is really sad. A homeless guy helps ward off an attacker, gets attacked (stabbed), and lies on the sidewalk dying while everyone walks by. I guess folks just thought he was drunk? Or maybe people really are this indifferent?

A lot of people are indifferent these days, about a lot of things, like health care, poverty, indebtedness. Indifference in one area encourages it in all.

4/25/2010

I read this and was totally shocked...
Someone should have helped him...


Cheers..Joe

In Seattle, back in the late seventies I got injured slightly in an attack and was walking several miles home on a bad limp. Along a major urban arterial (actually also a state highway). Nobody would pick me up, in spite of the fact that I was bleeding and limping.

I decided to do a social experiment. I lay down on the curb, with my legs sticking out into the street enough that most drivers would tend to veer around them. I was in a contorted, un-natural position, but had a view under my arm to see the passing cars.

NOBODY would stop. I counted over 400 cars going by, many of them single male driver. Finally a car stopped and asked if I was all right.
It was a beat-up jalopy so crammed full of this family of black hicks there was barely room for me.

I've always kept that in mind.

That's sad, although I admit I'd probably have been one of those who just drove by, at least pre-cellphone era.

I don't think I'd have walked past the guy in the story, I would have at least gotten my phone out, and not to just take a picture. What a tool that person was who did that.

It's a cold world, isn't it, but it has always been that way.

In the 1960's a young friend and I were out in her Model T Ford that her dad gave her for her 16th birthday to keep her off the freeways. Of course, we drove on the freeway from Long Beach to Hollywood and were on our way back at a whopping 40 mph when the tire blew. It was raining, and we already put down the front window in order to see at all. It was about 3:00 in the morning (we had been at a coffee house listening to poetry) and we pulled off the freeway in an industrial area, black night and deserted.

We didn't have a jack. The drizzle continued, fortunately not a cloudburst. The spare was on the rear of the car. We were in the middle of nowhere. A surprising number of cars went by, cars with nice looking couples in them, not stopping. Then a beat up car full of old men (at least they looked old to us) in hard hats stopped. We were terrified. They were speaking with accents, had dark skin and were scarey to two frightened girls.

In between lectures about two "children" being out so late in this open car, they jacked up the car and took off the tire. In the process, the rear bumper was bent over the spare. They had to put the tire back on, jack the car down, take off the spare and jack the car back up again, etc. Finally done, soaked, they insisted on following us onto the freeway and continued to follow us until we reached our exit. Then they flashed their brights and continued on their way.

Angels come in many forms. We had a carful that time.

My minister brought me to tears one Sunday with a story about a couple and their young child dining in a restaurant and paying their check when a man in shoddy clothing with a full beard came in the door and was being escorted out. The young mother was holding her two year old and her purse, neither too well. As she saw the man, she held her purse tighter and the child less. With a flying leap, the child flew from her arms and with a reflex, the dirty man caught him. The child laughed with pure glee as the mother cringed.

The child was simply taken with the man's beard and thought he was Santa. He giggled and laughed and the man's face broke out in a wonderful grin that stopped the restaurant's representative from bodily sending him out the door. When the mother tried to retrieve her child, he hung on; and the couple and the dirty man left the restaurant together to make less public stir.

Once outside, the little boy returned to his mother's arms but kept his eyes on "Santa." The man thanked the couple for treating him with respect, that this was one of the few joyful moments he'd had lately, after personal tragedy and job loss. Because of the child, he realized there was still joy left in the world and he would treasure that moment.

To the restaurant and to the couple, he was a dirty, unkempt person to avoid. To the child, he was Santa.