As he perched on the girders of a half-completed traffic ramp on Manhattan's lower East Side one afternoon last week, Louis Sarno, a sinewy construction foreman, saw a big-city tragedy in the making. Directly across traffic-jammed South Street an apartment window stood open. As Sarno watched, a two-year-old boy climbed on the sill, teetered in fright four floors above the sidewalk. Sarno yelled at two gardeners working across the street. They did not hear him. The 41-year-old foreman wasted no more time.
He turned and sprinted precariously along 100 yards of bare girders...