Lindsey ’97 Hailed as ‘Subway Hero’

It was one of those moments when Chad Lindsey ’97 simply reacted. Little thought went into this one. It was what he had to do.

So he jumped down onto the subway tracks at Penn Station in New York and saved a man he had never before met from an oncoming train.

It certainly wasn’t part of a typical day for Lindsey—an aspiring actor, a free­lance proofreader and an Internet en­trepreneur. But, indeed, that is what transpired the afternoon of March 16 as Lindsey was awaiting a train on his way to a reading.

“Yeah, it was a fight-or-flight situation,” says Lindsey, who is from Harbor Springs, Mich.

Lindsey was standing on the subway platform when, suddenly, a man came upon the edge of the platform too quickly to stop, falling onto the tracks and hitting his head. The man, later identified as 60-year-old Theodore Larson, lost consciousness from the blow and was bleeding.

“I don’t even remember dropping my backpack,” Lindsey says. “I just saw that no one was doing anything, and a man was lying across the tracks bleeding, and a train would be coming any second.”

After jumping down onto the tracks, Lindsey attempted to awaken Larson to no avail. So Lindsey lifted him back onto the platform as others gathered around to help. Glancing down the tracks, Lindsey noticed the glow of an oncoming train and quickly pulled himself out. About 10 to 15 seconds later, he says, the train arrived.

Lindsey brushed himself off as best he could and got on the next train, arriving at the reading with time to spare.

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