A Cuban resident in Las Vegas who works as an Uber driver shared on TikTok an experience she had at 3:43 in the morning that left her wondering if she did the right thing or not: helping a young man who seemed to have been thrown out of his house in the middle of the night, in one of the most dangerous areas of the city.
The video, published this Thursday under the user @tunegraconsentida7, features the host recounting the events from her car, still moved by what happened.
The race took place in Palo Verde, an area she describes as dangerous: "Palo Verde is a hot zone, it's a drop zone, you know, especially at this hour of the morning, it's terrible."
Upon arriving at the location, something made him feel uneasy from the very start. A young man in his twenties asked him to move the car into the darkness, which set off all his alarms: "My instinct told me no, dark Palo Verde, trouble, don't go back there."
However, he pressed on. As he got closer, he discovered that the boy had a large amount of bundles and appeared to have been thrown out of his home in the dead of night.
What she did next is something she herself acknowledges as reckless: "I got out of my car, something I shouldn't have done, but I did." She closed all four doors of the vehicle, opened the trunk, and began loading the bags alongside the young man.
"He was a boy about my son's age, roughly twenty years old. It seems that at this hour of the morning, they threw him out of the house," he recounted. "I felt sorry for him and I helped him carry his bags."
When they arrived at their destination, the young man tried to give her a tip, but she refused it: "He went to give me a tip, and I told him no; something told me not to take it, not to take it."
The story is not the first time a Cuban Uber driver faces risky situations during their nighttime shifts in U.S. cities.
The driver acknowledged that another woman behind the wheel would likely have made a different decision: "Another female driver would have canceled the ride, but seeing the need she had, I stayed."
What impacted her the most was the reflection that came afterward. She thought about her own children and what it would mean if they were ever in a similar situation: "If they find themselves in such a situation, I hope, my God, that my children find someone like me."
The stories of Cubans working at Uber in the United States have generated multiple content on social media, ranging from episodes of discrimination to moments of solidarity like this one. A 11J protester working as an Uber driver in Miami also touched thousands with his story, and a Cuban in Texas suffered racist attacks while doing his job.
The host also linked the experience to a conversation she had some time ago about how difficult it is to live far from home without support: "It's hard not to have someone to pick you up, it's hard not to have someone to open the doors for you."
At the end of the video, he posed an open question to his followers: "Did I do the right thing or the wrong thing?"
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