People are or at least can be quite nice. My life has been helped and changed through the kindness of strangers, some of whom became friends.
Some will say you were lucky, or brave or something else. Being kind I have found tends to generate others being kind around me. Does it always work, in more than a handful of decades, it has for me.
Good going, seeing things as they were, and not letting fear let you see what wasn’t there.