Christmas on the San Francisco Subway

"Do you have a dollar?" asked the man beside me at the subway station.  He was dressed as though he'd been doing manual labor all day. "I gave a couple bucks to the guy playing by the station entrance and now I don't have enough for my fare when I get off."

"Sorry man, I only have a twenty."

"Where you gettin' all that?"

I laughed.

"I'd give it to you if I had it."

"I know. I can tell by your spirit. But hey, if I can find someone to change your 20, will you give me a dollar."

"Sure, man. I give money to that guitar player too sometimes.  He's actually pretty good."

He boarded the train alongside me.  My stop is at the end of the line, but his was about halfway down, in a particularly bad part of Oakland.

He walked around the train asking people if they had change for a 20. No one did, and most of them seemed annoyed by the questions.  After a few minutes he returned.

"I tell you what. I'll just ride the train out to your stop, and then you can use the change machine to break your $20.  Then I'll catch the train back."

"Man, that would take about an extra hour.  That's a whole lot of trouble."

"Yeah, but one time I hopped the gate and got a $125 ticket. I can't afford that. I'm trying to buy a Christmas present for my girlfriend."

"So, if I break a 20, am I going to get $20 change back in quarters?"

"No, the $20 change machine gives you four fives."

"Alright," I said. "But that's a lot of trouble to get a dollar."

"Actually, I could use one of the fives.  Once I get off at the station, I have to take a bus to my mom's house."

I began to get skeptical.  The request for a dollar just became five, and I wondered if $5 would multiply, and whether he did this kind of thing often. 

But he looked like he had worked all day, he had a credible description of his job unloading shops at the port, and he was catching the train home at rush hour. As we continued to talk, he seemed like a really nice guy.  And even if this was some kind of elaborate con, he was willing to ride the subway and extra 25 minutes each direction, with a 15-minute layover in between, for five dollars.

Whatever the story, he clearly needed the $5 more than I did, so I told him he could have a five.

As I heard the man make polite conversation with another woman beside me, I began to wonder.  If this guy needed five dollars more than I did, didn't he also need $20 more than I did?

 I thought of his poor mom, waiting an extra hour on her so he could legally depart his train.

"I don't want your mom to have to wait so long," I told him.

"It's ok," he said.

"I want to just give you the $20."

"Are you sure? Thank you so much.  I'll pay you back on Friday, when I get paid."

On the ride home, he kept insisting that he would repay me the entire ride home. He told me about working overtime to pay for Christmas.

He asked me about my job. In today's political climate. I don't always like to tell strangers that I'm a prosecutor, and inner city Oakland isn't exactly the place to make an exception to that rule. But this time I did.

"Do you love it?" he asked.

"I do."

"Gotta do what you love."

I don't know if you believe in the man upstairs," he said a few minutes later, "but this is a miracle. I have to get my mom to the doctor somehow.  That 20 dollars will do it."

He promised to meet me at the subway entrance on Friday to repay me. I told.him what time I usually got to the station. I would have liked to have heard an update on his mom.

When Friday came, it was cold and rainy and I was feeling ill, so I only waited a few minutes before I went to into the station to catch my train.  

I don't know if he ever showed up. I wasnt going to take his money, but it would have been nice to tell him that in person and wish him a merry Christmas.

But I hope I made Christmas a little merrier, for both the nice man and his girlfriend, regardless.