Two seniors visiting the Big Apple last week from Texas became a New York subway story in the most positive way after they had a chance encounter with the NYPD’s Chief of Transit.
Retired nurses Mable St. John and Karen Baxter-Rhoades are in their mid-70s and have been friends for over half a century. They were even college roommates together.
Every two to three years, the colleagues make a pilgrimage to New York to take in the sights and sounds of the metropolis. However, while riding the F train on Feb. 19 to their hotel, the trip seemingly got off to a heartbreaking start.
As the pair disembarked the train on 34th Street and Herald Square, St. John realized that she had left her bag containing her iPad inside the car.
“My life is on that iPad. I just really hated to lose the iPad with all my pictures of my grandkids and my family. I called my husband, and he was able to track it. We could see the iPad was still in the car, riding from stop to stop, which amazed me because I thought somebody would have taken it within two stops,” St. John recalled to amNewYork Metro. “Let’s face it, it’s an iPad with a neck pillow that pretty much screams tourists on it.”
At 10 p.m. that evening, the two seniors went in search of help. Seeking aid from an MTA worker, the nurses frantically explained what had happened to the booth worker. By this time, the train had almost made it to Coney Island, and although the MTA staff member attempted to call down to the station, she was getting no answer.
Then NYPD Chief of Transit Joseph Gulotta and Lt. Michael Scally, who just so happened to be in the station, spotted the upset women.
“We’re walking out of Herald Square. We see these two frantically talking to the booth attendant,” Chief Gulotta recalled. “I said, ‘Please give Transit District 34 a call.’ We called the sergeant on the desk there, Keith Miller, who was excellent. He sent two officers down.”
The patrol officers searched the F train after it had pulled into the Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue station, and incredibly, they found the bag still sitting on the seat, having made the long journey untouched.
While Baxter-Rhoades said she held out hope, telling her friend that there were a lot of good people in the city, St. John believed the odds of finding the bag were long.
Becoming emotional as she remembered the feeling of finding out that her bag had been recovered, she attributed the intervention of the NYPD and the fact that no other rider touched her belongings to being watched over by her recently deceased brother.
“I’m a realist. The odds are not very good that somebody wouldn’t have taken it. So, I have no explanation other than God put the chief in that station at the exact minute I was standing there, and then my brother must have watched over it until the policeman found it,” St. John said, weeping.
The two women hopped back onto the train and made the trek to Coney Island’s Transit District 34 to pick up her property. By this time, it was almost midnight, leaving the two seniors out far later than they would usually be comfortable with.
The pair then got another surprise when the NYPD sent a patrol car to bring the ladies back to their hotel.
“It was a special moment. To be able to help somebody, I don’t think it’s a better feeling than that,” Chief Gulotta said. “It’s the reason I became a cop.”
St. John said the experience will stay with the two women for life.
Before they returned to Texas, they said they were again riding the subway when they came across a sign reading, “Don’t become someone’s subway story” — something, ironically, they said they were proud to become.
