Monday, April 16, 2018. Rochester, New York.
Joel McHale is 46 years old. Millions know him as the sharp-tongued host of The Soup and a star of the sitcom Community.
This weekend, he is far from Hollywood. He has been doing stand-up shows upstate, including one at Alfred University.
Now he needs to get to New York City. He is booked on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon the very next night, to promote his brand-new Netflix series.
Then the weather turns. Rain soaks the region. His flight from Rochester to LaGuardia is canceled.
He posts a quick update to Instagram: “Flight was canceled out of Rochester.”
Manhattan is more than 300 miles away. There is no plane to catch. So he opens the Uber app and asks for a ride.
Here’s what makes it worse: the app will not even let him type in Manhattan. The farthest destination it accepts is Ithaca, a college town nowhere near the city.
His request goes out anyway, to a total stranger.
Late Monday morning.
In the small town of Lyons, in Wayne County, a man named John Costello sees it.
Costello is no veteran. He has been driving for Uber for just 2 months. Ride-sharing itself only arrived in Western New York in the summer of 2017, less than 1 year earlier.
His phone rings. It is the passenger. He explains that he needs Manhattan, but the app will only let him enter Ithaca.
Costello could say no. It is a massive trip for a brand-new driver, in pouring rain, with another 6 hours alone on the road home afterward.
Instead, he keeps it simple. It is early in the day. He might as well go out and make some money.
He picks up his passenger at the Hyatt.
The road south.
Costello does not recognize the man at first. The face looks familiar, but he cannot place it.
So he asks what he does for a living.
The answer comes in 3 short words. He is an actor.
For nearly 6 hours, the two strangers head downstate together through a wet April afternoon. McHale jokes online that they will hydroplane the whole way.
In that same post, he tags his driver by name. A brand-new driver from a small upstate town is suddenly part of a TV star’s story.
They do not hydroplane. Costello gets them there.
Monday evening. Manhattan.
The car finally pulls into the city. The fare on the app comes to $692.
For a driver 2 months into the job, that is an extraordinary day’s work. Most passengers would step out, say thanks and disappear.
McHale is not most passengers.
He adds a $100 tip through the app. Then he hands Costello another $100 in cash. That is $200 on top of the fare, nearly $900 in all.
Then he does something almost nobody thinks about. He pays for Costello’s gas for the trip home.
Every long-distance driver knows the hidden cost of a ride like this. It is the journey back. 6 more hours, an empty car and not a single fare.
McHale makes sure the man who got him there does not pay to get himself home.
Afterward.
Costello opens his inbox to find something else. It is an email from McHale, thanking him for making the trip.
Tuesday, April 17, 2018.
McHale sits down next to Jimmy Fallon in front of a national audience. He has a story to tell.
He describes asking a stranger: “Can you take me to Manhattan?” Costello’s answer, he says, was an enthusiastic yes, far too colorful to repeat on TV.
And he calls him an amazing driver.
The very next morning, he tells the story again on Live with Kelly and Ryan.
Back upstate, Costello is already behind the wheel again by Tuesday, picking up local riders like any other day.
He tells Rochester’s News 8 that McHale is “a very, very generous man.”
Here is the part that stays with people. McHale does not have to do any of it. The fare is paid. The ride is over. Nobody is watching.
Most of us will never take a $692 Uber ride. But all of us depend on people whose names we never learn. The driver. The cashier. The night nurse. The stranger who says yes when every plan falls apart.
Whether their long day ends with a real thank-you is often up to us.
Would you have taken that ride? And has a stranger ever gone the extra mile for you?
Someone who needs to know, the people who get us where we’re going deserve more than a fare.
