Newark Mayor Cory Booker became my favorite politician the moment I saw the documentary Street Fight. (And my friend Jeff’s favorite the moment he learned Cory is a black man who speaks Hebrew.) I thought I couldn’t idolize him any more that I already had, but then he read the blog entry I wrote about him and messaged me his thanks.Cut to Thursday night, and according to Reuters, Cory was just being Cory:
Booker arrived at his Newark home on Thursday night to find his next-door neighbor’s house ablaze. His neighbor said her middle-aged daughter was trapped upstairs and begged for help.
He and his bodyguard, a police detective, tread up the stairs into the home's kitchen, and when the mayor tried to go deeper, the bodyguard grabbed him by the belt to prevent him. The mayor said he “whipped around and we had some words... I’m his commanding officer.”
The mayor broke free and moved further into the home to search for the woman. “I felt terror. I couldn't breath. I finally heard her and found her,” Booker recalled.
He hoisted her over his shoulder and carried her to safety. Both were rushed to the hospital for treatment, and the woman remained hospitalized in stable condition.
“It went from bad to worse. I was terrified in that blackened, sooted room without an exit,” said Booker, whose clothes caught fire.
At the morning news conference, Booker shrugged off a reporter's question about being a super hero.
“I think that's way over the top. I'm a neighbor who did what most neighbors would do, jump into action to help a friend,” he said.
Beg to disagree, sir.
