an old story in a new way

van Gogh

attempted a modern retelling of the "parable of the good samaritan"

There was a grad student named Hector biking home after a long day of class from UCLA to his home in Culver City. He comes from a proud, Mexican-American family, where he is the first to graduate from college. He still lives with his family, and all of his younger siblings really look up to him. He was sitting at a red light just south of Venice, when a car pulled out of the gas station on the corner and started following him at a distance.

Once he was all the way at the corner of the next block—a fairly residential and dimly lit area, the car ran him off the road. A couple of gang members from the car got out—one stuck a knife in his back while the other told him to be quiet, grabbing his backpack, and his wallet and phone out of his pockets. They quickly jumped in the car and the driver sped away. Hector couldn’t move—he was laying there on the sidewalk bleeding, about to pass out.

Just a couple minutes later, a car turned onto the street. The man driving the car was a professor of Human Rights at UCLA. He noticed Hector and began to slow down, but once he realized how bad the situation looked, he sped up and slid around the corner.

Another car turned onto the street a few moments later, and pulled into the driveway right next to where Hector was laying. He happened to be Hector’s neighbor who was running for city council. He had just stopped by to put a campaign sign on Hector’s family’s lawn a few days prior. When he noticed Hector, he didn’t get out of the car, but backed out of the driveway and drove back the way he came.

Just then, a woman dressed in a full burka was walking down the street with her groceries. She was a Palestinian immigrant whose husband was also attending school at UCLA. When she noticed Hector, she dropped her groceries and called her husband. She didn’t want to call 911 because she couldn’t speak very good English. Instead she told her husband to hurry and drive to where she was—she lived just a few blocks away. Her husband swiftly drove their new car those few blocks to meet his wife and a bleeding Hector. In the meantime she tried to revive him with some water, and a meal she just purchased to bring home to her family. When her husband arrived, he helped her pick Hector up and place him in the back seat of the car, and together they drove him to the ER.

Hector didn’t have any ID on him, and was not conscious, and the man and his wife had no way of contacting his family. The Palestinian man told the administration at the hospital that he and his wife would be responsible for his hospital bills, and gave him his ID and credit card.