“As Errol Rose made preparations on Monday to bury his 15-year-old son, Christopher, who was killed last week in Brooklyn during a fight over an iPod, he received a telephone call from a stranger. The man spoke in tones that the grieving father said had momentarily quieted his anguish,” Kareem Fahim reports for The New York Times. “The stranger, Mr. Rose soon learned, was Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer, the company that makes the iPod.”

“‘I didn’t know who he was,’ Mr. Rose said yesterday. ‘He called me on my cellphone, at 4 maybe. Or maybe it was 5.’ Mr. Rose said he had stopped noticing the passage of time since his son was killed,” Fahim reports. “The men spoke for a few minutes. Calling him by his first name, Mr. Jobs asked how Mr. Rose was doing, he said, and conveyed his sympathies. ‘He told me that he understood my pain,’ Mr. Rose said. ‘He told me if there is anything – anything – anything he could do, to not be afraid to call him. It really lightened me a bit.’”

Fahim reports, “One of Mr. Jobs’s assistants contacted a reporter for The New York Times on Monday and asked for Mr. Rose’s telephone number. ‘Some people talk to you like they’re something remote,’ Mr. Rose said. ‘He was so familiar. After every word, he paused, as if each word he said came from his heart. We live in a world which is changing rapidly. We have the technology that can give us the iPod and everything else, but it’s not all these things. We have to work on the minds and the hearts. We’re failing these kids. We’re not loving them like we’re supposed to.’”

Full article here.

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Teen killed for his iPod – July 05, 2005