A few weeks ago, I was working in Syracuse, N.Y., and I experienced an armed robbery for the first time.
On my last evening there, I was having dinner with a friend at a local hotel lounge. Around midnight, after everyone else had gone, I walked my friend (who was staying there) through the lobby and over to the stairwell to say goodnight.
I suddenly heard a loud noise that sounded like papers rustling, and I thought someone had fallen down. The stairwell -- where we were standing -- was around a corner, but I could see a reflection of the hotel front desk in the window of the hotel's restaurant. In the reflection, I clearly saw a young man with a hooded sweater and sunglasses standing threateningly behind the clerk. The commotion I heard was the robber jumping over the front desk, kicking papers around as he lunged. As I witnessed the clerk getting the money for him, my first reaction was for me and my friend to get as far away from the danger as possible.
By this time, my friend was already on her cell phone calling 911. She was somewhat loud, and I was worried that the robber would hear her calling or see us, since we could hear what was going on and see him in the reflection. I suggested that we go to her room and finish the call in safety, but as we walked down the hallway, her cell phone started losing its signal. She then turned around and went to an emergency exit door for a stronger signal. By that time, she saw the robber leave through the front doors of the building, and I immediately ran to the front desk to make sure the clerk was OK.
Moments later, two or three police cars arrived on the scene. Since we were the only other witnesses other than the clerk, we were interviewed by detectives. I do not believe that they ever found a suspect. The thief got away with $500, and he did not harm the clerk in any way. I know these things happen all the time, and sometimes the outcomes are much worse. But to me, the robbery itself is not the story, but rather, how I reacted.
I believe that we all think we know how we would react in situations like this. I always thought that I would not necessarily be a hero, but at least I would try to defend the victim and intervene. But when it actually was happening, the thought to help or intervene didn't even cross my mind. All I could think about was my own and my friend's safety and seeing my family again. Before this event, if you asked what I would do in this situation, I would have said the exact opposite.
The point is, none of us really knows what we would do in extreme situations until one actually happens to us. No matter how you may perceive yourself, there is no way to know what you would do if a child is trapped in a burning building and you are the only one around; or if a fellow soldier is wounded and caught in enemy gunfire; or if terrorists hijack your plane on 9/11 and the only way to save innocent lives is to overtake them and crash the plane into the ground.
I think that in such situations the person who we really are comes out. And it comes out, not as a rational decision, but rather as an instinctual reaction. I didn't decide to not try and help the clerk or stop the robber. I didn't think anything at all -- I just reacted, and my instinct told me to get away from the danger.
An extreme moment like the one I experienced defines who you really are. In my case, I didn't like what I discovered.
It turned out that the robber had a rifle or a shotgun (even though I never saw it). Afterward, the police said we did the right thing by calling them and staying away from the gunman. So I guess, in retrospect, it was better that I didn't intercede because I, being unarmed, could have escalated the situation. I may have been shot, and I could have died.
But the truth is, in that one defining moment of my life, something about me, some perception that I had about myself, did die.
