Just Another Everyday Heroic New Yorker
In a world short on heroes, you have to wonder where we come up with folks like Wesley Autrey.
You probably know him as the "Subway Superman," which rings pretty true, even if Autrey can't bring himself to use it. Feted by David Letterman, paid by Donald Trump, and praised by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his "astonishing bravery," Autrey is the selfless Harlem construction worker who last week let go the hands of his two young daughters and jumped onto the Manhattan subway tracks to save a fellow New Yorker. The man, a film student named Cameron Hollopeter, had suffered a seizure and fallen onto the tracks. Autrey, 50, pulled Hollopeter to a small trough between the tracks, covering him as a train screeched to a halt overhead-with horrified onlookers assuming he was dead.
Now Autrey is the toast of the town. Trump handed him a $10,000 check. The MTA, which runs the subway system, gave him a year's worth of unlimited metro cards. He's been offered free trips to Disney World and tickets to Broadway's The Lion King. People stop to shake his hand. And the hard-nosed city columnist Michael Daly is pushing for the city to name a school after the good Samaritan.
But to hear Autrey tell it, he did what he would expect any New Yorker to do. "You should do the right thing," he said. "I did it out of kindness. Not for recognition or glory." Still, even he would admit he's not just Everyman. After accepting the city's Bronze Medallion-an honor previously bestowed upon such luminaries as Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.-Autrey noted that on a platform full of commuters, only he and two women came to Hollopeter's aid. "We've got to show each other some love," he said.
Maybe he was heard. A few days later in the Bronx, two men rushed to the aid of a toddler dangling from a fourth-story fire escape. When the boy fell, the men, Julio Gonzalez and Pedro Nevarez, caught him, saving his life. "I'm not a hero," said Nevarez. "I did what any other father would do." Just two more ordinary New Yorkers stepping up.
This story appears in the January 15, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
advertisement
