Ginger Weiss’s mugging turns an apparent attack on a vulnerable woman into a reversal of control: after being seized and threatened in an isolated passage, she recognizes that her assailant is unarmed, incapacitates him, and brings him into public view. The episode makes concrete the gap between her slight, easily underestimated appearance and her capacity for decisive action under threat.

Background and Threat

Four years before the trouble at Bernstein's Delicatessen, Ginger was an intern at Columbia Presbyterian, where sixteen-hour shifts and longer were routine. On a hot, humid Saturday night in July, after an especially punishing tour of duty, she left shortly after ten and headed home. A hulking man accosted her, seized her arm, and threatened to break her teeth if she screamed. The passage offered little immediate help: no pedestrians were close, and the nearest cars were two blocks away, stopped at a traffic light.

The attacker pushed Ginger into a recessed doorway, where the faint light let her see that he had no weapon. While he emptied the purse she had willingly handed over, he made repetitive sexual threats. Ginger judged that his size was doing more work than any demonstrated fighting skill; recognizing that he was unarmed gave her an opening, but did not remove the danger of resisting.

Reversal and Escape

Ginger struck at the point where she could hurt him most: she kicked him in the crotch, seized one of his hands, and bent his index finger backward. The attack exploited the intense pain produced by forcing the finger back and straining the nerves of the hand. His strength and size no longer gave him control; pain overcame him, and he gagged, choked, and vomited as she forced him along the passage.

She did not release him. Ginger feared that, if given the chance, he would beat or kill her, so she urged him onward despite her disgust and terror. Reaching the sidewalk without finding anyone who could call the police, she pushed her subdued assailant into the middle of the street. Passing traffic stopped at the unexpected sight, turning an isolated assault into a public spectacle and bringing the witnesses she had lacked in the passage.

Aftermath and Significance

The police eventually arrived, to Ginger’s relief and, even more, to the relief of the man who had attacked her. The ending reverses the encounter’s opening imbalance: the assailant who had seized and threatened her was now being kept in motion by her, exposed to public attention and awaiting police intervention.

The story became a legend at the hospital where Ginger had served her internship. Its force lies partly in the contrast between the impression she made and what the crisis disclosed. Ginger was slight and often underestimated on first encounter; here, quiet assessment—not physical size—lets her identify the opening, act with precision, and survive. The mugging is thus both a violent incident and a revealing instance of the competence others could take weeks or months to recognize.