"Give me your money. Give me your fuckin' wallet. Give me your money." This is what our photographer Mike Regan heard after work this past Monday night.

The kid, maybe 20 years old, had a shiny black pistol, fully extended, levelled at Mike's chest. The kid was running toward him.

Mike decided to run, too. A moment of animal instinct.

As he ran, Mike felt a cold tingle in his back. He could imagine something nailing him between his shoulder blades. He stopped.

"All right all right all right," Mike said. Threw his hands up. Turned around.

"Give me everything you got." Pistol still aimed at Mike's heart.

Mike reached for his wallet, pulled out two twenties, curled them up and pushed them into the kid's hand. The kid wasn't a pro. He ignored the bag containing thousands of dollars of camera equipment. And the iPod in his jacket pocket. He seemed content with just the $40.

The kid ran.

Mike picked up his bag and embraced the surreality of the past 60 seconds.

Just that morning, Mike and I had been talking about this week's "Angle" photo, and the irony of people being shocked by images of the devastation of Katrina, yet not being shocked by similar images of devastation caused by decades of drugs, crime and poverty. "How do people live with this kind of stuff around them?" he asked.

We didn't vocalize it, but there was something unspoken: Thank God we don't live somewhere like that.

Sometimes, I think God is listening.

Mike, meanwhile, is fine. He wants to find the kid.

Not to prosecute him. "I would just love to spend the day with him—walk the streets with him, hear what's on his mind. What was the impetus for holding me up? Drugs? Was he in debt to someone else? Was it to impress a girl? Was his dad around when he was growing up? Does he have someone looking after him?"

His impulse is understandable; that's part of our jobs. Aside from it being a potentially tragic evening, Mike also knew that it would be a great story. You hardly ever hear what's going through the head of the kid holding the gun.

Coincidentally, in this week's cover story by Doron Taussig, you will.

I won't ruin the story for you, but at its center is a parking lot stickup, and it tells the story of some of the alleged perpetrators. From their point of view, not the victim's. You can see and hear the jolt of some young kid's life, veering off the tracks.

For something like $40.