Dave Davies: Another random attack goes ignored
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.
E
VERY 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 L.A. 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."