Story highlights Hours-long subway delay causes Hunter College nursing student to miss graduation

Jerich Alcantara decided to celebrate in the subway car with strangers

(CNN) It's every New Yorker's nightmare: missing a major event due to a random subway delay.

Jerich Alcantara, 22, was on the subway with his family on the way to his college graduation when someone pulled the emergency brake. He was scheduled to graduate with his class at Hunter-Bellevue College of Nursing on Tuesday.

"At first I was worried we'd be late," Alcantara told CNN. "But once it was obvious we'd be late I was hoping maybe we'd catch the end of it."

But Alcantara ended up celebrating his graduation in a quintessentially New York way: on the subway, complete with music and his graduation robes.

Alcantara and his family had left at 8 a.m. from their Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights to be on time for the 10 a.m. commencement in Manhattan. His train hadn't even traveled one stop before the emergency brake was pulled, stopping the train in the underground tunnel. It took nearly two hours for a rescue train to eventually arrive and to take riders to the next stop.

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