Photo: Chris Trotman/2011 Getty Images
On Monday, NYPD Officer Yi Huang put his language skills and family story to good use when he managed to talk a suicidal man down from the Verrazano Bridge. Huang was called to the scene when officers realized that the man only spoke Cantonese, and he discovered that the man happened to be from the same Chinese town he’d immigrated from as a child. For four hours Huang talked about his family’s experience as immigrants, and urged the man, who was distraught over a dispute with his 18-year-old daughter, to think about attending her wedding and meeting his grandchildren. Eventually the man allowed officers to pull him to safety, and he’s currently being treated at Staten Island University Hospital.
