A Senseless Fire and the Stranger Who Put It Out

NEW YORK — The fire department was gone, the police were on their way, and all around them was a mirror image of what had happened just hours earlier. Sabrina Rudin and her father watched a video on her phone screen for a clue.

Rudin opened Spring Cafe Aspen three years ago on West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village, a bright spot for fresh juices, coffee and breakfast, lunch and dinner. The cafe had sidewalk seating, huge windows, and lots of flowers under a water canopy.

But lo and behold, early in the morning of May 17, the place was in ruins.

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A window was broken by the heat, the blind burned and melted. The flower arrangements burned. Inside, a white film of chemical from the fire extinguishers covered the counters, floor, fruits and vegetables.

That morning, they learned that the fire had been intentionally started by a passerby. In the video, he takes an object out of a trash can, sets it on fire, then applies the flame to a planter installed outside the cafe. The fire spreads into the planter and spreads upward.

Since the pandemic, things have not been the same in the neighborhood where Rudin lived with her husband and young children. And now this.

It's hard enough having three kids and running a restaurant in 2024, Rudin thought. Now you have to wake up and find that someone set the place on fire.

Maybe, she thought, I'm done with this town.

Carefully planned itinerary

The predawn hours belong to the garbage collectors who scour upscale neighborhoods, downtowns and through-town neighborhoods. Angelo Cruz, 49, had been driving his Classic Recycling truck for 12 years and had pieced together his sprawling route like a puzzle.

The trick, he’d learned, was to save Greenwich Village for last. On paper, it made sense to visit the area earlier. But his trash pickups took place at bars and clubs that stayed open late, and he’d just have to come back after they closed anyway.

Timing was everything. Toward the end of his tour of duty, he was in a hurry to return home, across the river from Newark, New Jersey. His reason was a one-year-old child: a boy named Xavier, but whom his father called “Little Man” or “Gift of God”.

Cruz already had a 30-year-old son and a 27-year-old son, and he and his wife hadn't seen Xavier arrive. He loved spending time with the kid, but man, he needed his sleep. If he got home early enough, the boy would be in daycare and the house would be quiet.

Shortly after 5 a.m. that Friday, he stopped his truck in front of the world-famous Comedy Cellar on MacDougal Street, now dark. He threw the heavy bags into the back of his truck, crushing them to free up space.

Every night, he collects around 17 tonnes of waste. But there was always a slight risk that some types of used batteries would explode under that pressure, so his truck was equipped with two fire extinguishers: one household-sized, one larger.

He left Comedy Cellar and turned right onto West Fourth. A little further to the right, on the corner of Mercer Street, there was this strange bright glow on the sidewalk and on the awning above.

A block he helped build

In the video, the fire spreads. Melted pieces of the awning fall onto the sidewalk like a glowing rain.

Rudin's father, Anthony Leichter, 86, helped build this neighborhood in the 1970s, at a time when there were only light factories and this corner of the village was virtually deserted. A local store sold household appliances for fireplaces. Others sold thermometers or sewing machines.

When downtown bankers wanted to inspect the building before giving him a mortgage, he escorted them, avoiding Broadway, its empty storefronts and its homeless people.

Leichter had overseen the merger of nine buildings on the block into one, opening up the interiors and creating connecting corridors and a main lobby. It was a colossal job. He moved into one of the new apartments upstairs and he and his wife were married by an interior rabbi.

Then Sabrina was born in the 1980s. When she was little, she used to go roller skating indoors. She loved looking out a window at the Empire State Building.

The family left town in the early 1990s, when Sabrina, the only child, was 6 or 7. New York was in the throes of its murder record, approaching or exceeding 2,000 murders a year for six years. The Village felt removed from the center of the violence, but still. A young child makes you think.

They moved to Westchester County, to an old farm. Leichter kept his ties to the city and commuted. Nearly 15 years later, Sabrina returned. Eventually, her parents came back, too.

Leichter could never have imagined things would turn out this way, as his daughter owned a café in the area that once sold fireplace pokers.

Now he was watching the video on the phone. There was a sprinkler system inside the cafe, but it did not immediately detect the fire outside, although flames spread to the awning above. The sprinklers did not turn on.

A family with a 2 year old child lives just above the café. On the screen, the fire rises towards the second floor as a minute passes.

'I know what you're feeling'

Cruz walked towards the glow.

When he was 10 years old, while living with his mother in Newark, their apartment was destroyed in a fire. They were driving home when it happened. He remembers the feeling of realizing that all these firefighters were running to his house.

He moved closer to West Fourth and confirmed what he saw. And yet, silence. No sirens, no alarms.

“There are people living there,” he later said. “I know how it feels. »

A few minutes later, a guard at a nearby construction site reported to the firefighters that there was a garbage truck and the driver was jumping out with this big red fire extinguisher. The driver asked the guard to call 911. Then he drove off, as if it was part of his regular job.

His final stops on the Lower East Side awaited him. Fire or no fire.

When Rudin and his father woke up that morning and arrived at the scene, the fire had long been extinguished. Before the most serious damage, the one that “God forbid” had occurred.

Most businesses would have been closed for weeks. And some business owners may have decided to leave permanently, as Rudin had threatened.

But Leichter still knew the contractors. He had his daughter's windows replaced within hours. It was as if they still lived upstairs and he was, once again, repairing something precious to his roller-skating granddaughter.

Hours after the fire, Rudin knew she wasn’t going anywhere. The restaurant would reopen the next day. Whoever the mysterious person had started the fire was, someone else in this big, messy city had put it out.

Cruz had already finished his journey long ago and was sleeping like any other day. His son would soon be coming home.

circa 2024 The New York Times Company