Aaron Tucker was 32, had a 21-month-old son, and had been living for only a few weeks in a transitional house in Bridgeport, Connecticut, after serving nearly two years of his sentence. On July 12, 2017, he boarded a bus with a single destination in mind: the job interview that could change his story.
Halfway through the trip, as the bus was passing through Westport, Tucker saw an overturned, smoking vehicle on the side of the road with a driver trapped inside. He asked the bus to stop. The driver warned him that if he got off, he would not be able to get back on. Tucker got off anyway. Together with employees from a nearby auto repair shop, he pulled the man out of the vehicle before the situation got worse. He missed the interview.
Karin Dale, a Westport resident who learned what had happened, launched a GoFundMe with Tucker’s permission. Within a few days, hundreds of people had donated more than $23,000. The company that was going to interview him rescheduled the appointment for the following Saturday. Dale offered to drive him there personally. Two strangers who had never met planned to have dinner together with their children after the interview.
