EVERY ONCE in a while, you hear a story of life in our town that is painful and infuriating, but leaves you with a shred of hope for human kindness.
This one involves a senseless, random attack, a victim's frustration with our insane health-care system and the apparent indifference of police.
It happened April 19, when Andrew Lopez, 29, was waiting for a bus at Greene Street and School House Lane in Germantown after dinner with a friend.
Lopez happens to be the son of former Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez, who now writes for the Los Angeles Times.
It's ironic that at the time of his son's attack, Steve Lopez was preparing for the Hollywood premiere of "The Soloist," a film drawn from Lopez's honest and compassionate writings about the realities of urban life.
It was about 8:45 that Sunday evening when three teenagers approached Andrew Lopez on the sidewalk.
"One kid tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around. I had a bad feeling about it," he said. "The kid said, 'Excuse me, do you know what time it is?' The next thing I knew I was laying on the other side of the street, holding my face. He'd punched me in the face, presumably with brass knuckles."
Doctors at Chestnut Hill Hospital told Andrew the blow had crushed several bones in the left side of his face, and he'd need a facial surgeon. They recommended Temple University Health Systems and gave his mother, Kathy, a phone number.
There was one little hitch. Though Andrew had recently earned a master's in library science, he was looking for work and thus without health insurance.
Kathy Lopez spent the next day in a series of phone calls and visits far too numerous to detail here, but the bottom line of this disgraceful story is that when Temple heard Andrew had no health insurance, they refused to schedule his surgery.
One Temple rep even told Kathy on the phone it was irresponsible for Chestnut Hill Hospital to send her son to Temple without insurance.
"I was absolutely shocked when he said there's nothing we can do for you," Kathy Lopez told me. "I just couldn't believe it."
Temple spokeswoman Rebecca Harmon said privacy rules prevent her from discussing specific cases.
She said Temple always provides emergency care regardless of ability to pay, and when patients of no means request "elective services" they're provided with financial-services counseling.
Andrew managed to get his surgery at Penn (his dad flew in for the operation), and he'll now have to cope with the bills beginning to arrive. He's hoping to get medical assistance, but it's worth noting that even before the assault, he was active in the campaign for universal health care.
His injuries are healing pretty well, he says. He looks and sounds normal, but he some trouble eating. There are metal plates in his face, and he still has numbness in his teeth, lips and cheeks.
"Nerve damage," he said. "They think the feeling could return over time."
Andrew gave a report of the assault to the police officer on duty at the Chestnut Hill emergency room. He was never contacted by a detective, but decided to call himself when he saw a story two weeks ago in the Daily News about an off-duty cop collaring four teens in Oak Lane. The kids allegedly had asked their victim for the time of day, then assaulted her - just like Andrew. The story said the kids were suspected of similar assaults in the area.
Andrew called the police, hoping to come in and look at photos to see if he recognized any of the kids arrested. He spoke with detectives a few times, but he said they never seemed that interested or invited him in.
"It felt like they wanted me to go away," he said.
I sent the Police Department's public-affairs office the details of Andrew's story yesterday morning, and late in the day I heard from a detective and a captain, who said they'll look into it and do what they can.
Meanwhile, Liz Dow, director of the nonprofit group Leadership Philadelphia, heard about Andrew's assault and has contacted friends to see how they might help.
You might be thinking that attacks like this, however troubling, happen pretty often in Philadelphia. And that most don't get the attention this one will, because the victim is an educated white man with a prominent dad.
Andrew Lopez would agree with you. He has thought a lot about what happened and has no interest in anger or retribution.
"I'm not remotely angry at the kids who destroyed my face," he said.
"I feel like they probably have nowhere to go and nothing to do, and are in sort of a dead-end position in life . . . feel bad for them, and frightened for everyone, including them."
I asked Steve Lopez for his perspective, and he wrote in an e-mail that he'd rather let his son speak for himself.
"All I'd like to say is that I'm proud of him for the way he lives his life and sees the world," Lopez wrote. "Social justice drives him and he's a frightfully well-read young man with a great sense of moral outrage and even greater humility and compassion." *
E-mail daviesd@phillynews.com.