Metro North Gothic — Juvenile
community outreach when you least expect it

Got into Hawthorne station late one day in May, around 8:45 pm. For those of you not from around here, imagine a middle- to upper-middle-class bedroom community tucked among the southern reaches of the Taconic mountain range (they’re hills, not mountains down here), about fifty minutes’ ride on the Metro North Harlem line out of Grand Central Station in Manhattan. A young man approached me in the lot, asked me respectfully how much I thought the cab fare would be to the CVS. Told him I had no idea, but that I had walked that distance in about 15–20 minutes in the past. He started off, and I went to my car. Of course he was angling for a ride, but I didn’t bite… not just yet.
I saw him half-jogging along Commerce Avenue, I decided on a whim to pull over. Rolled my window down, made sure he recognized me as the guy he just spoke to, offered him a ride. I knew where he was ultimately headed, knew that it wasn’t the CVS, but opted to engage him in non-judgmental conversation, show him some basic decency — you know, be a human being.
He climbed in, shy at first but visibly grateful. He quickly loosened up when I asked him where he was coming from, told me he was visiting his grandma on the Grand Concourse & 181st street, that he was 14, that he’d been in juvenile jail, that he was now at the JCCA Cottage School going on two years. I asked him about curfews, he skirted around the topic a bit but said he had to be in his dorm by 10 pm. The ride lasted maybe 3 minutes, in parting I gave him a fist bump & said, “You look like a good kid — just stick to the rules.”
Again, for my readers less familiar with these parts, the JCCA, formerly named the Jewish Child Care Association, operates the Cottage School residential treatment program for emotionally troubled youths, as well as the Edenwald Center for kids with developmental disorders, on a beautiful wooded plot of land on the border of Pleasantville and Thornwood, complete with a rocky stream and deer, adjacent to the cul-de-sac where my family and I live. This campus, along with another treatment center in the area by the name of Hawthorne Cedar Knolls, has not been without controversy. There have been recent cases of off-campus rowdiness and minor crimes committed by a few resident kids, as well as disturbances on campus that had to be broken up by police. To be fair, the bulk of these incidents is tied to Cedar Knolls, but people often lump the two centers together in conversation. There is always a steady undercurrent of rumbling from townsfolk that just want these centers gone, while others are cautiously supportive but in favor of administrative reforms.
I don’t suggest that you should do as I did, I may not either, if the situation arises again. Was the young man African-American? Yes. Did he look out of place in an almost entirely white town in the middle of Westchester County? Yes. I am glad that I went outside my comfort zone, to make a connection, to show some compassion. I did some quick mental calculus, weighed the risks — as did he, by getting into a car with an almost complete stranger — and decided in that moment to do something, when I could have gotten away with doing nothing. I thought of all the recent controversy, of all the posts I had seen on social media community forums and in the local papers, some sympathetic comments, some nasty ones, referring to the kids as “these people,” “delinquents,” etc.
Turning now to my fellow townspeople: You too can show compassion, without opening your car door or compromising your personal well-being in any way, just by thinking a bit about these kids, what paths led them here, how they are dealing with the trauma of their past and how they are adjusting to their new surroundings. By choosing your words kindly, pausing for a second before demonizing them with blanket statements in person, in print or online. By considering how a kind word or action may make a difference in their lives. By realizing that they already are part of our community, and that we should treat them accordingly.



