Background: Recently hero father Manuel Jesus Cordova Soberanes gave up his attempt to come to the United States and instead turned himself over to the Border Patrol, all to save the life of a injured nine-year-old American boy.

Cordova found the boy wandering in the Arizona desert after the boy's mother was killed in a car crash on Thanksgiving Day. Cordova, who was promptly deported, was a noble good Samaritan--to learn more, see my recent blog post Illegal Immigrant Hero Father Deserves Medal and Visa, not Deportation.

As I'm sure readers can tell from reading the previously referenced blog post, I was particularly very moved by the story of Cordova. I suppose that's partly because I am a father of a nine-year-old, and Cordova saved a nine-year-old.  Also because I think that Mexican immigrants get a bad rap in this country, and it was nice to see a positive story about them.  And because I like the way Cordova and the boy interacted and managed to get rescued, even though both of them were stranded out in the middle of the desert with no common language.

Beyond this, there is another reason why I was so moved by the story of this good Samaritan.  When I was younger, I traveled a lot.  I pretty much traveled all over the world, generally by myself, on and off from the time I was 19 until my early 20s.  As a result, I occasionally ended up in situations where I was dependent upon the kindness of a stranger.  A couple examples come to mind.

In one case, in a complicated series of events I ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere in the Mexican state of Vera Cruz, basically out in the jungle.  I had had too much to drink and had a ferocious and painful thirst. I knocked on the door of this farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere at three in the morning, and asked for help. A farmer answered the door, and invited me in. 

He was sleeping right there on the dirt floor, beside a couple of his kids, and also a cow. I asked him if he had some drinkable water.  Without a moment's hesitation, he went and got me some of his limited supply of drinkable water and allowed me to gulp it down.  He also gave me shelter for the night, fed me in the morning, and gave me a little water for the road.  When I offered him some money, he refused. I've never forgotten him.

Another time I was traveling late at night in a train through Czechoslovakia on my way to East Germany in the early 1980s.  This was back in the communist era, and an American traveling alone in that part of the world was a rare sight, particularly a 19-year-old.  One time the train stopped and some police or security guards got on.  They demanded my ticket and, for some unimaginable reason, I had lost it and could not find it.  I also did not have any more money on me. Two guards grabbed me and started dragging me down the hall of the train to throw me off.  I would either spend the night alone outside in some little town out in the middle of nowhere, or be taken to the police station and held or even jailed. 

As they dragged me down the hall I grabbed the door of one of the compartments and quickly asked for money in Russian and in German, two languages which I had studied.  As they were about to drag me away, a gentleman named Helmut Hoppe from East Germany stood up and said he would pay for me. He paid for my ticket all the way to East Berlin, where I was able to get some money.

(The photo is of my travel visa--"DDR" stands for Deutsche Demokratische Republik, i.e. Communist East Germany.)

I told him how grateful I was for his assistance, and asked him what I could do for him.  Oddly, he told me that he was a tremendous fan of the Beach Boys, who he had heard on the radio from West Germany, and he asked me to send him some Beach Boys records.  Not surprisingly, Beach Boys records were not sold in East Germany at that time. 

When I got back to the United States a few months later, I bought a couple Beach Boys records and mailed them to him.  The packages came back stamped "Verboten" (forbidden). I tried to send him a tape, and it also came back.

After the Berlin wall came down in 1989, I looked for his address but I had lost it. I felt a little guilty for a long time that this man had helped me so greatly, and I had never been able to send him his Beach Boys records.

Anyway, perhaps that helps explain the soft spot in my heart for good Samaritans like Manuel Jesus Cordova Soberanes.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 15th, 2007 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Immigration. You can trackback from your own site.