Thanks to strangers who saved my life
Looking back at a life filled with close calls, I salute a few of the unnamed people who altered my destiny
The other day I looked in the mirror and thought, “FFS, how can I still be alive?”
I wasn’t thinking merely of the many years that have rolled across my face, but about the many times that I experienced a very close brush with death, but then out of the blue some stranger swooped in and saved me — sometimes without any awareness of their rescue.
Take, for instance, the Really Cute Guy in The Racer’s Blue Line at Kings Island.
Kings Island, in Cincinnati, was the biggest amusement park in the Midwest at the time — approximately 76 BC — and the BIG ATTRACTION was its sleek roller coaster, The Racer. What made The Racer so “cool” was it was actually a twin ride — with two roller coasters that raced side by side each, one track cleverly called the Red Racer, which was red, and the other the Blue Racer, which was blue.
My friend Gayle and I queued up in the line for the Red Racer, a few hundred people in front of us, but 15 minutes into the wait, right before we were about to board the Red Racer, I saw him: The Boy of My Dreams.
The Boy of My Dreams had long, shaggy hair and looked vaguely nefarious, which was the look I went for back then.
“We have to get in the Blue Racer line — now!” I told Gayle, and at the last possible moment we climbed over the metal bars dividing the red and blue Racer lines — as if by being in the Blue Racer line The Boy of My Dreams, who was 30 people ahead, would somehow notice me.
By the time we boarded the Blue Racer, I’d lost sight of him — but I saw an Even Cuter Guy on the Red Racer and considered crossing back over, but it was too late: we clamored into our car, the Racer race started, and my memory of why I hate rollercoasters was already kicking in.
As we ascended the first very high hill on the course, I thought I made eye contact with the Even Cuter Boy, but as we descended, something strange happened: the Red Racer was no longer beside us.
Many thrills and chills later, by which time my stomach was wrapped around my neck, the stupid ride finally stopped, and Gayle and I got out and approached my waiting mother.
Mom burst into tears at the sight of us.
“Oh, honey, thank God!” she exclaimed, pointing at the first hill of the roller coaster. “The Red Racer got stuck at the top — and everybody has to walk down.” I looked up, affirming what she said: one-by-one the Red Racer occupants were walking down the very steep, ladder-like stairs from the top of the 88-foot-high hill.
“You’re such a klutz,” continued my mother, “I knew you’d never make it down alive.”
I looked at the kids coming down, some crying, all scared to death, and realized she was right — and had I not seen the boy on the Blue Racer and changed lines, I would have been one of those on the stuck Red Racer who were walking down the very high hill.
So wherever he is — and knowing my previous taste in boys, he’s probably in prison — thank you Boy of My Dreams for saving my life.
Another anonymous lifesaver appeared one night at the door of my 9th-floor room in the historic Hotel Belleclaire on New York City’s Upper West Side a few decades ago.
I knew something was off with the place when I stepped into the elevator. It was riddled with bullet holes. I was hoping the bullet-hole elevator decor was just a post-modernist design statement since this was trend-setting Manhattan.
Besides, the cat in the apartment I’d been subletting had found a litter of mice — and kept planting rodent heads on my pillow, so I figured whatever they had in the Hotel Belleclaire had to be better than that.
I was wrong.
The en suite hotel room itself was actually okay — in a nicotine-yellowed walls kind of way, but everything worked and there were no signs of bed bugs.
However, later that night, while I was in bed reading Esquire, I heard a siren nearby. Then another. And another.
“It’s the big city,” I told myself. “Don’t be paranoid.”
But the sirens kept coming, and I finally peered out the window noticing six firetrucks were a-flashing on Broadway below. Certain that it must be a nearby store, I decided to evacuate nevertheless and fixed my hair, put on lipstick, picked up a briefcase with my writing, and opened the door.
To be greeted by a wall of smoke.
I slammed shut the door, trying to figure out if I should try to make it down nine flights of stairs or should instead jump out of the window. Uncertain what to do, I started screaming at the top of my lungs.
Which is when the stranger appeared at my door.
“There’s smoke everywhere,” said the 30-something man wearing glasses. “Don’t try to leave. Sit by the open window. But stay put.”
I shut the door and ran to the window, looking for a fire escape, but there wasn’t one. “Should I jump?” I yelled down to the firemen nine floors below, but I was too far up to hear their reply.
Still uncertain, I recalled that Anne, my best friend from baton twirling days, was in town. So I called her hotel, waking her up.
“What’s wrong?” she asked groggily.
“Oh, I’m dying,” I began.
Once she’d assessed the situation, Anne advised me to put wet towels under the door to prevent smoke from entering and made me promise not to jump assuring that from nine floors up the chance of survival was slim — advice for which I will be eternally grateful.
I fell asleep on the floor next to the window, my hand clenching my briefcase of writing, which I planned to fling out the window if my room was engulfed by flames. Happily, however, it wasn’t — and around 4 AM a very handsome fireman knocked on the door and said the coast was clear.
The next morning, riding down in the bullet-hole elevator, the hotel residents told me a disconcerting story: new manager, two brothers, had taken over the mostly resident hotel where some tenants had been living for fifty years — with rent-controlled prices.
The residents in the elevator told me that the new owners had even hired a thug to rough up the old ladies, a plan that was prompting some to hurriedly leave.
However, according to the residents in the elevator that morning, just a few days before, the thug had shown up in the lobby demanding payment. One of the brothers told the thug he’d pay up later and stepped onto the lift with his family. The thug gunned them down.
Hence the bullet-ridden elevator.
The residents wondered if the fire was just another ploy to drive them out, although the official cause given was a water heater on the fourth floor had shorted out, starting the blaze.
According to news reports — one of which described “hysterical hotel occupants yelling from their windows, ‘Should I jump?’”— dozens of people on the fourth floor had made the plunge, unfortunately, with a few listed in critical condition but many having perished.
A few others didn’t make it down the smoke-choked stairwell, a stairwell that I probably would have tried to run down had it not been for the advice of the 30-something man wearing glasses.
So thank you Stranger at My Hotel Door who saved my life.
(NOTE: The fire took place long ago and the hotel has certainly changed managers since I stayed there. I hope.)
A third close brush with the netherworld unfolded outside a castle in Riga, the lovely capital of Latvia. I was intoxicated by the Baltic country, where I’d just dined on deer carpaccio and wild mushroom soup. I wasn’t elated just because of the cuisine, and the Old World architecture, and the groovy underground artists’ warehouse I’d found.
I was delighted because I was going to Riga Castle to interview President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who’d aligned her country, formerly part of the Soviet Union, with the West: Not only was Latvia soon to come into the European Union, it was also about to join NATO — in response to continuing threats from Russia next door whose lawmakers loved to vow they’d be snatching Latvia and the other Baltic countries right back.
Before our meeting, I popped into a florist and bought a huge bouquet of tall flowers including gladiolas and callilies. The arrangement was stunning and I asked them to wrap it — expecting them to make it all pretty with plastic and ribbons.
Instead, they wrapped it in printer paper — the ancient kind with all the pages attached and perforated holes on the side.
After they wrapped the bouquet and stapled it, the contents could no longer be seen — and the wrapped flowers looked sort of ugly. But I thought, “Guess that’s just how they do things here.”
I caught a cab outside the florist and the cabbie and I chatted amiably en route to the castle, which housed the president’s office, with me going on about how excited I was to interview Vaira Vike-Freiberga and to be writing about Latvia.
He pulled up in front of the castle — near the wing that looked like a lemon-yellow rook — and I paid and hopped out at the guards’ station.
The guards, holding automatic rifles, took one look — and aimed their weapons at me, yelling at me in Latvian.
The problem: the opaquely wrapped flowers.
The taxi driver ran out of the car, yelling at them not to shoot, explaining that I was a journalist, and placing himself between me and the rifles.
“They want you to put the package on the ground,” he told me. “They want to know what’s in it.”
“Flowers, beautiful flowers!” I yelled, and the cabbie conveyed my message.
They kept their rifles aimed at me, and the captain ran over and looked at the package now on the ground. “What is it?” he asked in English.
“A bouquet for the president!” I repeated.
He gingerly picked it up. Then ripped off the paper, glaring at me.
“You idiot!” he said. “We thought it was a weapon! You could have been killed!”
And still glaring, he waved me on through the gate.
So thank you Unknown Taxi Driver in Riga for jumping out of the car and saving my life.
If you or the Stranger at My Hotel Door or the Boy of My Dreams are ever in Barcelona, do look me up. I’d love to buy you a drink as a symbolic gesture of thanks to all the dozens of complete strangers all over the world who at one time or another saved my life.
I love it. Wow! Made think life without the kindness of the strangers has no irony at all, and it would be unbearable. Tell me about it! Life is a constant rave, even when things are upside down and make no sense. Be thankful and feel that you are truly rewarded, always.