A med student’s first day in the Big Apple was heading for disaster until a kindhearted news vendor showed her that the streets aren’t as mean as they seem.
Everything was going wrong for Juliann Giese, a radiology student who arrived in town Sunday to start a two-week residency at St. Barnabas Hospital in The Bronx.
She got on the wrong bus, realized she was late for her first day at the hospital, and then hopped in a cab, only to leave her new iPhone in the back seat.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she recalled. “I was in shock. I saw Abdou, and thought he had such positive energy. I decided to ask him what to do.”
Abdou is Abdou Hamami, 45, who works at Yorkville News on Lexington Avenue and 86th Street.
“She was upset. I told her I have a phone if she wanted to call her phone. She tried calling it and no one was answering, so she left for the hospital,” he said.
But Hamami kept calling, and finally the cabby answered.
“I told him please drop the phone at my newsstand,” he said. “He wanted $20 to drop the phone back, so I told him I’d give him the money.”
Hamami then called Giese’s mom, Cathy Gallagher, in Florida, to pass word that the phone was returned.
“It’s an ‘only in New York’ story,” Gallagher said.