Hardship and kindness sit side-by-side on SEPTA

Last week I asked SEPTA riders to share stories of times they've received a free ride, or given one.  The request was prompted by a SEPTA fare collector giving me a free ride on the subway when I found myself without any cash.

Readers responded, and here are stories they shared.

Chris: He emailed about a free ride he got shortly after being released from prison in 2011. Chris (who asked that his last name not be used because of his criminal record) described leaving his halfway home to take a bus. He was nervous, he said. It was his first time using a SEPTA bus in 15 years.

When he boarded the bus he had a $20 bill, but of course SEPTA only takes exact change. The bus was packed, he said, and he described staring at the bus driver, not sure what to do.

"He asked if I was ok," Chris wrote. "I said 'yes sir and this is all I have.' He said 'come on bud this ride's on me and you can stand next to me' as he can see I was nervous."

The next day, he wrote, he showed up for the same bus with exact change, and money to repay the free ride he received the day before. The bus driver wouldn't take the extra fare.

"I insisted as I didn't want something for nothing," he wrote. "He said 'thank you and that it will pay for the next rider that comes on' like I did. A great experience with SEPTA and it helped to ease my nerves after coming home."

Brian Villa: He wrote about riding the Market Frankford Line and seeing a visibly destitute woman board the train and ask for help. He was moved, he said, to see another woman who was caring for a small child donate a token to the woman asking for help. Villa described seeing a person who herself didn't look like she had a lot being generous to someone in need. He decided to give the woman with the child a token to replace the one she gave away, and gave her another on top of that.

"Here you go," he recalled telling her. "I can afford it."

Joanna Buchanico: This Philadelphia lawyer saw a woman in her 20s at the Tasker-Morris stop, where both token machines were broken. The woman was "pleading with the worker in the booth to make change so she could pay her fare."

The fare collector refused. Buchanico heard the collector tell the woman to walk to a store a few blocks away to make change.

SEPTA employees are not supposed to give people breaks on fare.

"I could tell she was heading to work and didn't have time for that (I know I wouldn't)," Buchanico wrote.  "So I gave her a token. She was very grateful."

The last story came from Josh Kruger:

Kruger was homeless in Philadelphia in 2012. When he was on the streets public transportation was the only option for traveling any distance. Sometimes shelters provided tokens, he said, but if they didn't a $4 round trip was a lot of money for a person with nothing.

He described a cold winter when he rushed from Center City to Holmesburg to make it back to a shelter before it closed its doors for the night.

"I didn't have any money," Kruger wrote. "I got onto the train knowing they wouldn't be checking fares until after we got out of Center City anyway. I anxiously awaited the conductor and what the interaction would be like. Sure enough, when he got to me, I opened my wallet and acted astonished, tried to feign surprise that I had no money. The conductor made a big to-do of it, shaming me in front of the other passengers."

"I responded angrily – I just wanted the guy to give me a break. I asked if he wanted me to get off on the next stop. He rolled his eyes and, again, very loudly asserted to me that he knew what I was doing and, sarcastically, to just enjoy the free ride. It hurt my feelings a lot, but the conductor wasn't exactly wrong, either."

A few weeks later Kruger needed the train to get to a doctor's appointment, and was again penniless. This time, he said, he waited until he was alone with the fare collector at Frankford Station and told him, "I'm homeless and living in a shelter. I don't have any money to ride the subway, but I need to get to Center City. I don't know what to do."

"The fare collector looked at me for a brief moment and told me to wait a minute. When it was clear no other passengers were around, he waved me through the back gate."

Kruger's circumstances have improved, he said. He's clean now, he said, with a home and a job.

"Things are better now," Kruger wrote. "And, really, they're only better because along the way a few key people treated me like a human being and gave me some help."