‘I hadn’t gone far when I had to flop down in the grass’

Fort Tryon Park

Dear Diary:

It was a spring weekend morning, about twenty years ago, and I was jogging in Fort Tryon Park.

Looking to my right as I ran toward the Cloisters museum along the path overlooking the Hudson River, I noticed a commotion near a parked van. I decided to take a closer look.

I jogged over and saw a man waving his arms as if gesturing for help, and a woman exiting the van who appeared to be in distress.

Somehow I knew she was choking.

The man shouted frantically in Spanish. Not speaking the language, I shouted back “Heimlich” and pantomimed the maneuver.

He didn’t seem to understand, so when I told him to call 911, I stepped behind the woman, stretched out my arms and pulled her closer. (I had never done the Heimlich maneuver before.)

After a few tries I heard a popping sound. Something had come loose. The emergency was over.

As I caught my breath, the man and woman held theirs in between and thanked me with big smiles on their faces.

I wished them well and headed out. I hadn’t gone far when I had to flop down in the grass. My legs were like jelly.

When I got home, I told my wife and children what had happened. Later I told some friends and colleagues. Quite a story, everyone said.

About a year later I started jogging again. It was Mother’s Day, the weather was nice and the park was full of families.

Looking to my left as I passed the back of the monasteries, I saw a man and a woman with a stroller walking towards me.

They started waving and quickened their pace towards me. Confused, I stopped and they came closer. The child in the stroller was a baby.

We were here last year, the man said in broken English. My wife was in trouble. You helped her.

I was amazed.

She was pregnant, he continued. This is our baby.

I was speechless.

As editor of Metropolitan Diary, I spend a lot of time checking the facts as carefully as possible to ensure the accuracy and authenticity of what we publish.

Some stories, like the ones I’ve told here and some included in this year’s “best of” contest, are almost impossible to verify. For that, we have to trust the authors to vouch for them by answering three standard questions: Has your article been published before? Is it original? Is it all true?

Now it’s my turn, so let me just say: No. Yes. And absolutely. Sometimes, I’ve learned, the serendipity of living in New York City isn’t too good to be true.