GUARDIAN ANGELS IN NEW YORK (1981)

The Guardian Angels is a non-profit international volunteer organization of unarmed citizen crime patrollers, founded in 1979 in New York City by Curtis Salwa. A year later, I was shooting this story for some European magazines. I bonded with a young Latino man, Apache, who lived in Hell's Kitchen and I ended up following him around for several weeks. The real reason for the Guardian Angels turned out to be the strong community the group provided to these marginal youth, a positive alternative to gang life. They wore their red berets with pride and saw themselves as protectors of the public in the subways, a force for good.