Neal Rubin: John Quiñones spent summer as child laborer picking cherries in Michigan

If you’re going to do what John Quiñones does, it helps to have evolved into who John Quiñones is.

After 16 seasons, the host of ABC’s “What Would You Do?” has become the public face of doing the right thing when no one is watching, or at least when you think no one is watching.

It's a nice face to be, and a valuable one. In a world where hostility increasingly elbows civility into oncoming traffic, "I get stopped on every block," Quiñones said from his home in New York City. "I'm a meme."

Sure, some people ignore or even embrace the frequently ghastly behavior the program presents. "But in every scenario, someone says something beautiful that touches your heart," he told me. "It restores your faith."

We were speaking because come Oct. 19, he'll deliver the keynote address at a fundraising luncheon in Farmington Hills put on by the Michigan chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW/MI).

At the annual Women of Vision event at Adat Shalom Synagogue, he said, he'll talk about acceptance, respect, his 40-year career as a broadcast reporter and his upbringing in San Antonio, where he didn't speak English until he started elementary school.

We started there and then veered to the most recent former president, industrial arts classes, his season as a child laborer in the cherry orchards of Leelanau County, and a disastrous "What Would You Do?" segment that wasn't so much poorly conceived as before its time.

MORE FROM NEAL RUBIN: Kind words from 45 years ago still resonate at U-M's law school

Familiar format, familiar face

The show launched in 2008. After a three-year pandemic-and-priorities hiatus, it's scheduled to return in February with the same format, where actors expose unknowing bystanders to conflicts or quandaries that invite intervention.

A waiter, for example, browbeats a deaf diner who's signaling for a pen to jot down his order. "I'm not here to play charades," he snarls in that scenario from 2019, and other customers dress him down and go find pen and paper for his victim.

Or, in another restaurant, a woman treats her daughter like a princess and her foster son like a pauper. The best Samaritans that day in 2015 provide the foster mom a few pointed reminders of her responsibilities, then give the boy a hug and an offer of a milkshake.

That moment of compassion is typically when Quiñones enters the scene, trailed by bright lights and a camera and almost always greeted with recognition and relief.

In his first season, though, in a scenario with a supposed soccer dad berating his 8-year-old daughter, no one interceded. Worse yet, the real parents were angry about the setup and the intrusion by some TV guy they didn't know. Kids were crying, somebody punched out the camera, police were called, and the segment never aired.

Things have improved since, said Quiñones, 71, even as the world seems to have unraveled.

"In today’s society, it can be dangerous to raise your voice," he said. It feels like there's less patience and less interest in a temperate exchange of opinions, and there are definitely more weapons.

He was stepping carefully around a contributing factor to the general discontent, but, yeah, "Donald Trump has said some awful things. It's all on the record. A lot of people take the liberty to think, 'If he can say it, so can I.' "

There's no ready antidote, but as the show emphasizes every time it airs, tolerance helps. And even a spirited discussion doesn't have to be mean-spirited.

A career, rung-by-rung

On the phone, there's a faint Spanish lilt to Quiñones' speech that doesn't come through on the air.

Though Juan Manuel (John) Quiñones is a fifth-generation Texan, his family spoke Spanish the way some households in Hamtramck used to get by with only Polish. His dad was a janitor, his mom cleaned wealthy people's homes, and one summer when his father was out of work, they joined a migrant labor caravan.

At 13, Quiñones said, with a bucket around his neck, he climbed a ladder and picked cherries in Northport: 75 cents a bucket, with his parents and two sisters, sleeping in one room and using outhouses and being followed as though they were criminals when they went to town.

From there, the family went south to pick tomatoes near Toledo for 35 cents a bushel. He was good for 100 bushels a day, $35 in 1966 money, and his dad could pick 135.

The trip was what they needed that one time and so they made do for six or seven weeks, "but I'll never forget being on my knees on the cold hard ground, looking at this row of tomato plants that seemed to go on forever," he said.

"My father said, 'Juanito, do you want to do this work the rest of your life, or do you want to get a college education?' "

The choice was easy, the execution less so. In high school, he said, teachers would listen to the Latino kid with the accent say he wanted to be on television, and they'd nod and steer him toward wood shop.

He had no real idea how to take the SAT and join the freshman class, but he figured it out and wound up at St. Mary's University in San Antonio. Before that, he'd won the male lead in a citywide production of “Romeo and Juliet,” and the drama teacher told him to tap the brakes on his rapid-fire speech and fully enunciate, far more helpful advice for his intended career than tips on using a circular saw.

He practiced speaking into a cassette recorder until he sounded like the anchors and reporters on the nightly news, then caught a break when an activist group threatened to complain to the FCC unless local broadcasters' staffs started looking a bit more like the listeners.

That led to a $2-an-hour radio internship, and, by the time he was 30, he'd climbed another tall ladder, this one to a reporting job in Miami with ABC.

He has been a co-anchor on "Primetime," won some Emmys, and made as much sense as he could of the elementary school shooting that took 21 lives last year in Uvalde, Texas.

His father, he noted, was still pruning trees and doing yardwork at 90. Quiñones is still on the air in his 70s.

"It's that work ethic," he said. What would you do?

Permission not required

Quiñones' Uvalde reporting helped inspire the invitation to speak at the NCJW/MI gathering.

He showed sensitivity and compassion, said chapter president Sallyjo Levine, and both that and his prime time series tend to share her organization’s focus on women, children and families.

“He believes in honest conversation and doing the right thing because it’s the right thing,” she said. “It’s impossible to hear that message too many times.”

The people on "What Would You Do?" who fail to act often regret it, Quiñones said, and vow to speak up next time. Though the show doesn't technically need releases from the people on camera — it films in states where only one party needs to be aware of a taping, and there's no legal expectation of privacy in a crowded public place — only 10% refuse to sign.

Typically, Quiñones said, the show gets enough good responses that it doesn't need to force the issue. But one refusal was particularly painful.

The setup involved an apparently drunken man at a bar whose son was due at soccer practice. Some bystanders kept the actor and child from driving off, while others didn’t.

One couple was particularly helpful. They interrupted their lunch to take away the drunk’s cocktail, replaced it with a cup of coffee, comforted the little boy and offered to call a cab.

Then Quiñones revealed himself, and the shining examples of thoughtfulness and responsibility refused to sign waivers.

“Please,” Quiñones said. “You guys are the heroes of the day.”

Can’t do it, they said, and finally, the man took him aside and explained why they were declining:

“Because I’m not married to her, and she’s not married to me.”

Quiñones loves the story, not just for the twist but for the reminder that morality occupies a sliding scale.

What would you do? In an imperfect world, sometimes you have to take what you can get.

For information on the Oct. 19 luncheon, where company president Rachel Stewart of Gardner-White Furniture will receive the Woman of Vision award, go to ncjwmi.org.

Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 'What Would You Do?' host John Quiñones to speak in Michigan