I interviewed one, an actor named Chad Lindsey, in 2009 after he jumped down and pulled a drunken man out of the path of a downtown-bound train in Pennsylvania Station. He in turn evoked the hallowed name of another, Wesley Autrey, who a couple of years earlier had laid down on top of a man having a seizure between the rails and waited as a train passed over them.

Couldn’t have done that, Mr. Lindsey said. Did what I did, but I couldn’t have done that. Mr. Lindsey had no warning that day — the guy wasn’t there one second, and on the tracks the next.

On that afternoon at Second Avenue, we all watched a similar situation play out.

Time slowed. A woman screamed. I pulled my messenger bag off my shoulder and let it drop. I was aware, behind me, of another woman shouting into the call box. There were a dozen or more people nearby. I distinctly remember a man yelling, “For God’s sake, stay away from that third rail!”

I ran several feet to the edge of the platform where the man had fallen. He was coming toward me — not because he had suddenly sobered up, but because there was another man down there already, pushing him toward safety.

I bent down and grabbed two fistfuls of puffy coat below his shoulders. Other hands reached down on either side of me and grabbed, too. We all pulled without a word, and up he came. We dragged him away from the edge.