BACKGROUND- In a big city like New York, thousands of strangers from many different backgrounds cross paths every day. But they rarely stop on the street to get to know each other. When people from very different places make the effort to connect, unexpected friendships can form. It was the first day of September in 1986, and the morning rain had given way to bright sunshine. A successful advertising executive made her way across 56th street toward Broadway, on the west side of Manhattan. A young boy—all of eleven years old and dressed in scruffy clothes—asked for some change for something to eat. Laura Schroff lowered her head and walked on; Manhattan was full of panhandlers, and she hardly even noticed them any more. But something drew Laura back to the boy. She still doesn’t know what it was, but she calls it an “invisible thread.” There’s an old Chinese proverb that says that an invisible thread connects two people who are destined to meet and influence each other. Laura believes she felt that thread. She turned back from the middle of the street and took the boy to lunch. The boy lived in a single room in a welfare hotel with his mother and numerous other relatives. It was only two blocks away from Laura’s home, but it might as well have been a different planet. As they talked over their lunch, Laura learned about the boy’s life. She herself had not had an easy childhood, but what she heard shocked her, and before she left, she told him to phone her if he was ever hungry. When she didn’t hear from him after several days, she returned to the spot they had met— and there he was, in the same clothes and too-tight sneakers. They arranged to meet again the next Monday. Every Monday, Laura Schroff and Maurice Mazyck had dinner together. Some Mondays they ate at Laura’s home, and Maurice discovered a life he had only seen on television. Gradually, Laura became the young boy’s first role model. She encouraged him to have dreams about his future and got involved in his education. Maurice’s teacher was perhaps the onl