To Help or Not to Help

A few years ago I had a software gig in downtown Denver. One day I went out for lunch by myself and walked out of the building and headed down the block. I noticed a teenage girl on the other side of the street who was looking my direction. Hardly anyone else was around. I needed to cross the street and decided to jaywalk since there was no traffic. I wanted to avoid this girl though so I walked a bit farther down the street before crossing. She was determined to talk with me, though. When I got close enough, I saw that she was crying and was definitely in need of help.

She told me that she and some friends had driven to Denver from Albuquerque - about 450 miles. They were doing some sort of fund raising activity and had actually accomplished some of that. But rather than make good use of the money, they had all gone somewhere and got drunk using all of the money they had raised. Then, for some reason that she did not tell me, they had abandoned her so that she was stuck in Denver with no place to go and no way to get home.

I agreed to help her but since I only had enough money for lunch, I took her to a nearby bank where there was an ATM and I got her enough money for a bus ride to Albuquerque and some lunch. She was obviously relieved as she went her way.

This isn't the first time an opportunity to help someone in this manner has come to me. But there is always that little bit of doubt about whether these people are sincere. To me, there seems to be a difference between someone with a story like this girl's from the random person who just wants a few bucks for some food or the people who seem to make their living by hanging out at "their" instersection asking for handouts.