Subway Hero

Michael Wilson: Subway heroes, as they are inevitably tagged even before the grease from the tracks is rubbed off, come along every now and then — indeed, as the story of Chad Lindsey suggests, perhaps more often than we know.

Minutes after rescuing a man who had fallen onto the subway tracks at the Penn Station stop on Monday, Mr. Lindsey managed to melt back into the anonymity of the city, escaping the notice of the police, paramedics and subway workers.

“I’m of many minds of being in the spotlight,” he said after a call from this reporter, whose short account of the accident on The New York Times’s City Room blog on Monday prompted one of Mr. Lindsey’s friends to disclose his identity on Tuesday. “But what the hey,” he said.


Leave a comment