When a Stranger’s in Trouble, Would We Fight or Freeze?

The other day, as I stood at the corner of Pacific and Windward waiting for the light to change, I came face to face with the wide gulf between my sense of altruism and reality. The street culture of a neighborhood like Venice can inure you to what might be shocking anywhere else. Still, when I saw a barefoot woman drunkenly weaving down the middle of the busy street, I was surprised. And immobilized.

She was wearing only a bathing suit under a T-shirt, her ruddy skin was leathery and she was drinking from a cup; alcoholic, probably, street person, probably. She looked furious; her body language was a virtual yellow light, cautioning onlookers to stay the hell away.

She lurched forward, first on one side of the yellow line, then on the other. She threw the cup down angrily and walked on, muttering. Cars on one side of the street had slowed to a crawl. She was the grand marshal of her own grotesque parade.

But cars on the other side were still whizzing by at 30 m.p.h. Any one of them could have struck and killed her.

This is ridiculous, I thought. I should just grab her and get her onto the sidewalk. But something held me back. Part of it was her angry stance; part of it was my own embarrassment, a feeling that if no one else was jumping into the thoroughfare, perhaps I was overreacting. Surely, she would remove herself from harm’s way.

Finally, she did. She navigated to the sidewalk, a heliotrope responding to the sunny voice of a kind young man calling for her to come out of the street.

Why hadn’t I raised my voice too or grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her to the curb?

These regrets are not idle ones. In the news lately, we’ve seen story after story about bystanders and how they reacted--or didn’t--in the face of violence.

A naked boy, reportedly disoriented and bleeding, is handed over by Milwaukee police to the man eventually charged with killing him. A 3-year-old girl is sexually assaulted at the side of a freeway within view of Manhattan rush-hour traffic.

These sickening and lurid events force themselves into our consciousness and make it impossible not to wonder: What would I have done if I’d seen those things? What would I do if I saw such a thing today?

After all, over neighbors’ protests, accused serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer convinced police that no crime was being committed, that he was simply in the midst of a homosexual dispute with his roommate.

The truck driver who chased and caught the man accused of attacking the little girl next to Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in Manhattan said lots of people saw the crime, but although some yelled for the man to stop, the driver was the only one who intervened.

In a case closer to home, a mentally disabled woman was beaten and raped in the middle of the afternoon near a busy Santa Monica intersection.

The first reports were too repulsive to absorb: Although the attack was visible from the street, no one had come to her aid. What bittersweet relief it was to learn that two people had stopped to help and that one had tried to restrain the assailant.

I heard a caller on the radio say he would have killed the Santa Monica rapist if he’d seen the crime.

I understand the violence of his response. It comes from the powerlessness of not being there to help. Most of us may not fantasize so vividly about intervention, but we feel sure--or pretty sure anyway--that we would fight instead of freeze. That we would do the right thing, damn the consequences.

I’ve always felt I would step in. And yet, I was unable to move when I saw that woman in traffic.

Local radio talk-show host Michael Jackson has a theory on why some people watch while others wake up: “I think one of two things happens to people, and I don’t think we have any control over it. Either we find the right gear and do the right thing, or we idle in neutral.”

Jackson recently found himself put to the test. Dining with friends at a restaurant in Aspen, Colo., he noticed that a woman at the next table appeared to be choking. As he watched in horror, she turned blue and began to drool.

The woman, it should be noted, was sitting with five other people; one of them--her husband--is a dentist, said Liz Plassman, the restaurant’s general manager. Surely a dentist knows how to rescue a choking person. And yet, no one at the table moved.

“I watched the people first look at her with almost disgust as if they thought she had bad manners, you know, because she began to drool,” said Jackson.

“She definitely began to go blue. And I just suddenly thought, ‘This is silly! Nobody’s moving!’ I didn’t say a word to our table. I went round, pulled her chair out, picked her up and proceeded to give her the Heimlich maneuver. And within I would imagine 20 seconds, there was a hollow, burping sound and up came parsley and steak.

“And the interesting thing was, nobody said thank you! They got on with their meal. If I had been at Madame Tussaud’s (wax museum) I would have expected that much reaction. And you know something terrible? I wanted to be thanked. I don’t know why. I really felt wonderful. I think I just needed the validation for my feeling wonderful.”

Consider yourself validated, Mr. Jackson.

You found the right gear.

Next time, if there is one, I hope I do, too. I will pull the lady out of the intersection.