One of Classic’s drivers extinguished a fire in Greenwich Village

Angelo Cruz used an extinguisher from his recycling truck to put out a fire outside of a Manhattan cafe. Credit Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

One of Classic’s drivers extinguished a fire outside of a closed cafe in Greenwich Village in Manhattan.

The New York Times uses a secure system for readers to send sensitive tips, which sometimes become the origin of explosive investigative articles. The platform, called TipJar, is designed to protect the anonymity of whistle-blowers who may be fearful of reaching out over email or meeting in person in dark parking garages.

In late May, I received an unexpectedly upbeat message via the platform.

“This is a feel good story at a time when we could all use one!” the tipster wrote.

Curious, I set aside dreams of breaking the next Watergate story and reached out to the sender, Anthony Pesce. Mr. Pesce worked at a private sanitation-trucking company, Classic Recycling, and described in detail what he had alluded to in his tip: On May 17, just before dawn, one of Classic’s drivers extinguished a fire outside of a closed cafe in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Someone appeared to have deliberately set the fire.

No one was injured, and there was no significant damage. The cafe even reopened the following day.

If I’m being honest, I didn’t think there was much to report at the time. There are too many deadly, terrible events to write about to also cover the ones that have happy endings.

But there was a kernel of something else there, a manifestation of the unease that has lingered over the city since the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a reporter for the Metro desk who spends a lot of time on the streets for my job, I find gloom-and-doom predictions of New York’s demise to be greatly exaggerated. However, to live and work here is to bump up firsthand against displays of property crimes and public lawlessness that don’t seem like they are being officially addressed.

And here was a good example — a random passerby setting a fire. I dropped by the place, Spring Cafe Aspen on West 4th Street, and left my business card for the owner, Sabrina Rudin.

She called me a short while later and described how disturbing it felt to watch surveillance footage of a shadowy figure setting the artificial flowers outside of her cafe on fire. “The true miracle was that angel, this sanitation worker,” she said. “He stops his truck in the middle of the street, leaps out, runs across the street and extinguishes the fire.”

A witness called 911, and the Fire Department arrived some three minutes later. By that time, the Classic Recycling worker had already put out the fire. The damage could have been so much worse had it not been for him — people live in apartments above the cafe. Ms. Rudin had once been one of them; she lived there with her parents as a little girl. Her father had helped develop the block in the 1970s, when the city was in far worse shape. She gave me his phone number.

Anthony Leichter, trim and youthful, was about to turn 86 when we met in the Village. He told me about the old days, when the block was home to warehouses and small manufacturers and shut down at night. No one could have imagined today’s brand-name, high-rent Village.

From the surveillance footage, Ms. Rudin and her father noticed the Classic Recycling sign on the side of the truck and called the company. Anthony Pesce — my tipster — looked through the schedule and identified a man named Angelo Cruz as the driver, and put them in touch. They thanked him profusely over the phone and invited him back.

I called Mr. Cruz, 49, who lives outside Newark. He sounded groggy at 6 p.m., and a baby squealed in the background. He was playing with his son before heading out to pick up trash in Manhattan, as he does five nights a week.

In our conversation, he downplayed his actions on the morning of the fire. As his truck neared the cafe, he said, he noticed the flames, bright in the predawn darkness. “I said, ‘Before it gets big, I could put it out with this fire extinguisher,’” he recalled. He did just that, and was on his way before firefighters even pulled up. He wanted to finish his route and get back to New Jersey to get some sleep before the baby came back from day care.

“I’ve got to get home,” he thought.

Whoever set the fire remains at large.

My first reaction to the tip was both right and wrong. It was not breaking news. But there was something.

I’ve got to get home.

Here were, essentially, two family men — Mr. Leichter, whose young daughter opened a cafe downstairs from where she once lived; and Mr. Cruz, a truck driver who had recently become a father for a third time.

And at the risk of a reporter sounding too sentimental, here was a moment when New York City worked the way you’d hope, with strangers looking out for one another.

The ongoing survival of that instinct could, at times nowadays, feel like news in itself.