Public Perception Of Shadowrunners, Badboy Glamour or Animals That Need To Be Put Down? Options

[bibliophile20]

Been musing over a random encounter that I "threw in" last session; one of the PCs spotted one of her enemies at Infinity (this is during the "A Stranger In Our House" scenario from Ghost Cartels) and retreated to the ladies' room to avoid confronting him. In there, after about 15-20 minutes, I decided to throw in a friendly NPC; a young woman sidles up to the PC and asks what's wrong; PC invents a story about her ex-bf being out there, and embroiders their last encounter into an appropriate sob story, and does a good enough job that the NPC volunteers to take the fellow down a few notches. "For this dirtbag, I'll gladly be your shadowrunner. So, Ms. Johnson, what's the job?" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) End result after that was the PC getting a new Loyalty 1 contact and the enemy getting publicly humiliated.

But did some thinking after the session was over; the NPC didn't know that she was talking to a shadowrunner. All she knew was that she offered to give some help to another woman that was distraught in the bathroom, and yet she used the metaphor of being a "runner"--someone else's covert operative sent to anonymously attack someone else--with a degree of gusto and the enjoyment of doing something "naughty." Further thought brought out the example of the "Barefoot Bandit" and the aura that he's somehow attracted around himself.

So, looking for more data so I can stop trying to generalize from a sample size of one NPC. In your games and setting interpretations, how are shadowrunners seen in the public perception? Anti-heroes? SINless animals that need to be put down? Etc and so forth.