MTA's gender bender

Helena Stone, a transgender woman who says the MTA's harassment has led her to relieving herself in a cup. (JRM)




by JOSHUA RHETT MILLER
(as seen in Metro)

MIDTOWN — A 70-year-old transgender telephone repairwoman who works for Verizon at Grand Central Terminal blasted Metropolitan Transportation Authority police officers yesterday for harassing her to such a degree that she fears using the public restroom.
Helena Stone, born Henry McGuiness, said since she began working at Grand Central in August, MTA officers have arrested her three times and called her the “ugliest woman in the world.” Now, afraid to leave her tiny office near the Metro-North tracks, she uses a cup to relieve herself.
“Not only pee, everything I do in a cup,” said Stone, adding that she fears for her safety when using male bathroom facilities.
Outside Grand Central yesterday, Stone and her attorney, Michael Silverman, detailed three incidents of alleged harassment that took place between September 2005 and January. In those incidents, Stone said, MTA officers demanded to see her identification, barged into her office and called her a “freak and a weirdo and the ugliest woman in the world,” and finally arrested her when she was walking into the women’s restroom.
The MTA released a statement yesterday saying they are conducting an investigation.
Stone and Silverman, of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, did not rule out a lawsuit. A complaint has been filed with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, Silverman said.

"I knew I wasn't dead," subway slip survivor says

by JOSHUA RHETT MILLER
(as seen in Metro)

MANHATTAN — Daniel Silverio, the man run over by a Brooklyn-bound 2 train last week, knew he was alive when he saw blood.
“Considering the last thing I saw was a train coming at me — then complete darkness — my first instinct was I thought I was dead,” Silverio said yesterday from his bed at Bellevue Medical Center. “I was hoping the afterlife would be clean and bright, but I knew I wasn’t dead when I was covered in dirt and blood.”
Silverio, a 29-year-old trader at TD Ameritrade, fell between the rails during last Thursday’s rush hour at the Wall Street station. He was pulled from under the first and second cars of the train, suffering a fractured hip and a fractured vertebrae in his neck.
“I knew it was a No. 2 train because they’re new, and they have a lot of space underneath,” Silverio said. “I’m a subway buff, so I knew I was OK because I wasn’t near the third rail.”
After crashing onto the tracks, Silverio said he briefly lost consciousness. Silverio said the next sound he heard was the best possible kind.
“I heard [emergency responders] say, ‘Don’t move, don’t move,’” Silverio said. “As I looked up, someone said, ‘This is the luckiest son of a bitch ever.’”
Silverio, who said he doesn’t remember how he fell onto the tracks from the Wall Street station platform, replayed the incident with his wife, Jennifer, and a family friend yesterday. He is expected to be transferred today to the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, where he’ll undergo physical therapy. He expects to wear a neck brace for the next 10 weeks.
“It’s like learning how to walk all over again,” Silverio said. “I’m doing all right, but obviously it will be a long road to recovery. I look a lot better though. ... Just a couple of inches or a few seconds could have been the difference from seeing me in the hospital or planning my funeral.”
Silverio’s wife, who met the self-proclaimed “subway buff” when they attended Pace University, also took a light-hearted view of the near tragedy.
“My first instinct was this was some type of sick joke,” she said of getting the call that Daniel had been injured. “You know, this is New York after all.”
As a schoolboy, Jennifer said, recalling a favorite story of Daniel’s grandmother, Daniel once drew the entire New York City subway map by hand. Little did he know all that attention to detail would save his life two decades later.
Asked if he plans to ride the rails again into Manhattan from Brooklyn, Silverio took off the same glasses he wore at the time of the accident and smiled.
“Like my rehab,” he said. “I’ll take it one day at a time.”


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