The Rewards of Routine

For three days New York City dailies played the story big. Column after column was devoted to Enrique Negron, a doughty little (5 ft. 5 in.) Bronx grocer who went to the aid of a police-man threatened by an ugly mob, and got stabbed in the back for his trouble. Then, last May, Negron was released from the hospital and sent home. The papers forgot him.

But Associated Press Managing Editor Rene Cappon was not ready to let the story drop. He suspected that there might be more to tell, and he was a conscientious enough journalist to put a routine note in his "futures file" as a reminder to check up on Negron early in 1966. The transit strike finally out of the way, an A.P. reporter made a call to Negron. Cappon quickly learned that he had another big story.

Negron, it turned out, was no hero in his Puerto Rican-Negro neighborhood where the "cop" is traditionally the enemy. His neighbors refused to speak to him; people stood outside his store muttering "Cop lover" or "Nigger hater," and customers no longer came to him. "Even people I helped, even people I lent money to pay the rent," he said, "they let me down." Negron had been forced to sell his store for $400, even though he bought it for $5,000. He was left almost penniless, and his wife was ill.

As soon as the A.P. story moved, New York's dailies realized that the wire service had scooped them on their home ground. Some sent their own reporters to interview Negron; most of them gave the story a big play. And publicity turned out to be just what Negron needed. Hardly were the papers on the stands than he received some 50 job offers, ranging from clerk in a life insurance company to a crewman on the Staten Island ferry. He settled for a temporary job as assistant circulation manager for the Spanish-language daily El Tiempo; but as a onetime seaman, he is considering returning to sea, where he can escape neighborhood mob scenes. Meanwhile, his fair-weather neighbors have suffered a change of heart. Once again, they are speaking to him.

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