New York City Barge Office, where Sanna Impola was taken.

In the October 15, 1900 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a homeless U.S. military veteran, down on his luck thanks to a mugging on the Bowery, meets a lost Russian maidservant in Harlem in the dead of the night and tries to help her. How their stories ended is not known. An excerpt:

“Charles Le Grand, who was recently discharged from the United States artillery service in San Francisco and was relieved of all his belongings, including his clothing, on the Bowery, Manhattan, some time ago, this morning found Sanna Impola, a Russian girl, who recently came to this country, wandering around the streets of Harlem. The girl made Le Grand understand she was lost and he led her to the Barge Office, where she was turned over to the authorities,

The girl came to this country three months ago and through friends secured a position as servant with a Harlem family. Yesterday she went to visit a countrywoman named Ida Halkela, living at Third avenue and Thirty-fifth street, Manhattan. She left there about 10 o’clock last night to go home and becoming confused lost her bearing and became lost. All night she wandered about and at about 3 o’clock was found near Third avenue and One Hundred and Twenty-seventh street by Le Grand, who was also spending the night walking the streets, because he had no money to pay for a bed. He took her to the Barge Office. An effort will be made by the authorities there to find her employers, and failing in this and the non-appearance of her friends she will be sent back to Russia.

Le Grand, who says he served in Battery G of the Second Artillery, and shows papers of honorable discharge, appeared at the Barge Office wearing the hat of a United States marine, the coat of an artilleryman and the trousers of a cavalryman. He said he came to New York recently and was robbed on the Bowery of $139 in cash, his watch and a ring. Even his clothing was stolen, he declares, and says that the combination suit he wore to-day was given him by different soldier friends he had met on the Bowery and who had taken pity on his plight.”