“How’d you know?”
“Word gets around quickly when Mark does a rare ‘nice boss’ move. Especially in a reporter’s first week at the network.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs at the ankles. “You ever think this might be the work of someone you know?”
I laughed. “I know something like five people in Manhattan. What makes you say that?”
She shrugged. “Seems odd that one of the people you profiled the night of the power outage got a brand-new van the next day. Maybe our news bosses are behind this ‘good stuff’ thing to get ratings or something.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m hoping they all have too much integrity to manufacture a story like this.”
Her smile faded. “Worth looking into. At least tell me you’re considering the possibility that all of this is a setup for a scam.”
“A scam?”
“Remember a few weeks ago some guys were all over the media for helping a woman after they saw she was paying for gas with pennies? They started a GoFundMe for her and raised like a hundred thousand dollars from people all around the world. But they didn’t give it to her. They ran off with it.”
“You think someone’s started all this so they can ask people to pay to join in?”
She took a sip of her coffee. “Why else would they be doing it?”
I let her question hang there. I wondered why we often leaped to assume nefarious motives when faced with things we didn’t understand. Maybe it was because we were all afraid we’d look naive or uninformed if we leaned toward the positive. But if I learned anything from covering the Good Sam and Robin Hood stories, it was that we couldn’t jump to conclusions before we got the facts. Before we looked at the story from all sides. “It’s also possible that they have good intentions.”
She pounded back her coffee. “Clearly, you haven’t lived in Manhattan for very long.”
An hour later I was heading down East Twenty-First Street to find a woman named Kristen who’d posted that her $12,000 bill at First Presbyterian Hospital had been paid in full by an anonymous donor. The cameraman assigned to me was a fifteen-year veteran of ANC named Chris Yamashita.
“Great to have your skills as a cameraman on this story,” I said.
“Photojournalist, not cameraman,” he replied, using the fancier title for the same job.
Then he started scrolling through the photos on his phone, showing me a quick slideshow of the memorabilia he’d collected from some of the stories he’d covered over the last fifteen years: a Cohiba cigar he’d received from Fidel Castro while on assignment in Cuba, a signal flag from an assignment in a nuclear-powered submarine, and a chunk of cement from the levee that broke in Hurricane Katrina.
“I like to collect something physical from every story,” he said.
Otherwise, Chris was not much of a talker—a big change from Josh, my LA cameraman, who had a joke or an insight about everything we encountered on our news runs. And from the way his eyes took me in, I had the definite feeling Chris felt like he was slumming working on this “good news” story with me, a newbie at ANC.
I was wrong about that. About a mile into the ride in the ANC news van, he said, “Your dad. He’s Senator Hale Bradley?”
“Yep.”
“What’s he doing about the shutdown? I’ve got friends who’ve been furloughed. And it’s bad. They live paycheck to paycheck as it is. They’re just a few hundred dollars away from having nothing. How’s he helping end this mess?”
“I haven’t talked to him about it. He’s been too busy to return my calls.”
“I hope you’ll tell him—”
“I’m not here because I’m Hale Bradley’s daughter,” I interrupted. “I’m a reporter, not a conduit to my father or a mouthpiece for his ideas.”
He nodded. “Well, there you have it.”
“There you have . . . what?”
Before he could answer, my eye fell on a homeless man in front of an H&M store who was holding a large box wrapped in white paper and purple ribbon. “Stop the van, please.”
Chris slammed on the brakes. “Yeah, sorry about what I said. I didn’t mean—”
“Get your camera and follow me.”
I jumped out of the van and ran to the man, who was sitting on the ground looking at the wrapped present, a discarded cardboard shipping box to his side. He was shoeless, dressed in tired gray work pants, frayed at the bottoms, and a faded blue T-shirt.
“Excuse me, I’m Kate Bradley. From Channel Eleven. I mean, ANC.”
He looked up at me with questioning brown eyes on a face that was leathered and wrinkled. He looked to be in his seventies, although he was probably much younger.
“I’m wondering about that gift you have there. Where’d you get it?”
He smiled, exposing several missing teeth. “They delivered it to me.”
“Who did?”
“Amazon.”
“Amazon delivered a package to you. Here?”
He nodded. “Delivery guy comes over. Asks if I’m Reggie Booth, and I say yeah. Hands me the package and takes off.”
I glanced at the shipping label, which read: “Reggie Booth, Man on Sidewalk,” and the address of the H&M store. “Did you order it?”
“Got no way to do that.”
“What’s inside?”
He shook his head. “Fraid to find out. What if it’s a trick or something?”
“Want me to help?” Our eyes locked, and I was caught in a moment of raw humanity. I wasn’t looking into the eyes of a junkie or a man who had made terrible mistakes. I was looking at a man who was suffering, and this box, whatever it was, contained a glimmer of hope.
I crouched down and helped him untie the ribbon and pull the wrapping paper off the box.
When Reggie opened the box, we were both surprised to see a brand-new pair of sneakers, a half dozen pairs of socks, and some jeans.
He lifted the shoes out of the box. “They’re my size,” he whispered.
I hoped Chris’s camera was capturing the expression on Reggie’s face, which quickly morphed from bewilderment to surprise to shock and then to joy in the span of four seconds. Even if it didn’t, I was sure I would never forget it.
“Guy I know. Joey. Said the same thing happened to him earlier today,” he said. “I thought he was making it up. Guess he wasn’t.”
“How would someone know your shoe size?” I asked.
“And what size pants I wear.” A glassy tear formed in the corner of his eye. “I dunno.”
I spotted a packing slip in the box and snapped a photo with my phone. Underneath the Amazon logo it read: A gift note from A Stranger. The note read: We’re all connected.
“What’s it feel like getting something like this?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead, his long, bony fingers caressed each item in the box as though he were double-checking they were really there.
“Someone thinks I matter.”
The story went viral, with viewers everywhere trying to figure out if Amazon was “in on the kindness thing” or if some Good Samaritan was actually going around Manhattan asking homeless people’s names, then finding out or guessing their clothing sizes and having Amazon deliver to them. I’d called Amazon, trying to see if they’d reveal who purchased the gift for Reggie. A polite customer-service representative told me, “We never share the sender information with anyone.”