Epistemological violence in America

Completely bizarre happenings on the El ride home yesterday: I boarded the Brown Line at Belmont around 5:30 and was made to stand until a number of people disembarked at Paulina. I sat down on one of the seats parallel to the doors, next to an absurdly tan 20’s-ish girl who looked much like many other girls of a similar age, class, and disposition in the city.
At some point, I believe around the Irving Park stop, she asked an older man sitting across from us a question, and since I was listening to music (Wolf Parade) on headphones, I didn’t hear what she said. In keeping with my nosy, I mean, inquisitive nature, I stealthily stopped my CD player to hear what was being said. The girl asked, “This is the Brown Line, right?” to which the man nodded affirmatively. Then, the girl stated, in an unsolicited manner, “It’s just so different than Alaska”.
Several questions immediately came to my mind, such as, what brought this girl to Chicago from Alaska? Did she just arrive here? Why is she on the Brown Line by herself, and where is she going? Also, how was someone from Alaska so damned tan in January?
I assumed she had her reasons and knew what she was doing, so I went back to listening to music and staring through the window.
After several more stops, I was almost home and the train was mostly empty, but the girl was still there and a middle-aged woman had sat down adjacent to us. After a moment, I noticed that the woman was staring at the girl and trying to not be terribly obvious about it. I glanced over at the girl, who had her head burrowed into the faux-wooden panel between herself and the doors, and was using her arm to hide her face. It was clear that she was crying.
As I stood up to exit the train, I was able to take a good look at the girl, who had emerged from her huddle and began to frantically search her purse for a tissue. Her face wore a look of complete fright, and again I wondered what exactly she was going through. She began to lean forward to ask, through her tears, the middle-aged woman how she might get to a particular address, which sounded like 3100 Irving Park, as I walked through the doors onto the El platform.
The good news was that she was at least in the vicinity of where she needed to go, and the woman on the train seemed eager to help her. The bad news was that the girl was obviously in over her head in the big city, and seemingly was mired in some sort of turmoil beyond being lost in a strange place.
I wanted to help this girl, ask her if she needed help in getting somewhere. Instead, I adopted the alienated city-dweller stance and did nothing. I figured that other train riders, particularly the middle-aged woman, would think I was some sort of smut peddler interested in putting this Alaskan on my creepy-as-shit website, and I let that stop me from doing anything.
So I ask you my dear readers (who at this point may well consist only of Vinnie), could I have offered some assistance to this girl without coming across as the scary guy on the train that wants to abduct/kill/do-God-knows-what her? Was I a coward for letting other El riders’ hypothetical judgments of me control my actions? Does it really matter anyway?

For the record, I just didn’t want to see an extraordinarily tan girl from Alaska be enveloped by the flesh slave trade.

Everyone, keep your eyes and ears open for such a girl prowling the western portion of Irving Park (hopefully not under the watchful eye of a man wearing gold chains and a fur coat).