***This is a story gathered from the field***

A friend of mine was going home last night after a long day of work and classes. In no mood to socialize or stop to smell the Valentine's Day roses, she simply wanted to get home and chill out with her son and husband, nothing else.

Getting off of the Roosevelt station in Queens, she noticed a fellow face down on the platform, passed out. Not an uncommon sight in New York. Neither was the sight of the other guy going through his pockets. In fairly typical New York fashion, everyone tucked their heads and pretended not to see what was going on. My friend, too, just kind of looked the other way and focused her mind on getting home to her family.

It's sad to know that this level of social disengagement can happen in a city. Would this happen in a smaller city or town? Perhaps, but, having lived in many different sized cities in my life, I would venture to say that this kind of incident would not go unnoticed or unattended to in most places. In the big city, the concept of humanity tends to get a little fuzzy.

Well, my friend had a clearing of her conscious half way down the platform walking toward the station exit. She decided that she couldn’t let this incident go down unabated. She immediately went to report the incident to the nearest MTA police station, which ended being several blocks away down the cold, rainy and windswept streets of Queens. Thank goodness.

Anonymous -- New York, NY