It was a typical weekend afternoon for us. Kelsey was super excited about going to her softball coach’s house to pick up her windbreaker for the All-Star team. As typical for a Saturday, we had errands to run, so we added that stop to the trip list.
My older daughter’s friend, Jill, had spent the night with us, so the four of us piled into the car that morning. Becca and Jill were in the back, and Kelsey and I were in the front. One quick note about Jill. She was hilarious. You never knew what she would do. This is the same girl that climbed in my car with a megaphone one afternoon, without my knowledge. When we drove into the parking lot to get ourselves a Jamba Juice, she rolled down the window and started chatting to people on the sidewalk as we drove by. She was super lighthearted and always fun to be around. So, as usual, we headed down the road with Becca and Jill giggling in the back seat about who knows what. The topics of conversation for the day aren’t important, but the normality of the day is.
At some point, I saw something incredibly strange in my rear-view mirror. I didn’t say a word. I was sure my eyes were playing tricks on me. So, I looked again. And then a third time. If what I saw was real, it could be a very bad situation for us. I took a minute to gather my thoughts and figure out how I would handle this.
The first thing I did was reach over and turn off the tunes. That got everyone’s attention. I made my first announcement.
“Ok, girls,” I said. “I need your complete focus here. I’ve got to tell you something, but you have to listen up and do exactly what I say.”
It was a bit dramatic, but it was necessary. The two little wild cards in the back seat needed to know by my tone I wasn’t goofing around. Things quickly settled down back there.
“I’m going to tell you something, but first, I need to know you’re listing to me and will do exactly what I say. Are we good?”
With that, I got a unanimous “Yes.”
“First, when I tell you what I see, I do not want you to turn around and look. You’re going to want to, but it’s really important that you don’t. OK?”
Again, I got agreement from the two in the back seat and one from the front. So, I continued.
I explained to them there was a white van directly behind me. It looked like a work van, the kind a telephone repairman might drive. I couldn’t see the entire side of it, but I did note there was no logo or any sort of writing, just an odd mural. I could see the driver and the passenger sitting in the front seats. However, both of them had black knit ski masks covering their faces.
The girls immediately understood the situation. It was August in Southern California, and it was a very warm day, not exactly ski-mask season. Something was very wrong here. The black ski masks were scary enough, but there was something else I hadn’t told them yet. I could also see a gun. The passenger’s left hand held the gun in the vertical position. I couldn’t see the entire gun, but I most definitely could make out most of the barrel and the tip.
And at this point, I was 100% sure of what I saw. I was incredibly uncomfortable with the van behind me, and I certainly did not want them to know I had seen them. So, I told the girls, “We’re going to take the next right turn and let them go in front of us.”
The next cross street was a bit down the road, so I asked the girls to help me look for it, hoping to distract them. It felt like forever. I asked Kelsey to grab a napkin from the glove box and a pen from my purse. I told her we would write down the license plate if we got a chance. I then asked her to grab my phone, dial 911, and hand it to me. These were the days when our phones did not connect to our cars, so using your cell phone while driving was a big no-no.
The car was silent. Even Jill was completely silent. The Jill we knew would have made a quick crack about me getting a ticket for talking on my phone while driving. It didn’t get more real for them than when I had Kelsey dial 911.
I think I got transferred twice before I actually got to speak to someone. I told the officer what was happening, where we were, and what I saw. I also told her about the gun that I could see. Lucky for me, the girls were calm and did not react to new information. I told the officer I was going to turn off the street we were on and let the van pass at the next cross street. As I turned, the van passed right by us. At that point, I told the officer the street name where we turned, and our 911 call ended.
We made a U-turn, turned right onto our original street, and continued down the road, assuming there was plenty of road in front of us separating us from the van, which there was. We could see the van, but we were a safe distance behind it. I carefully drove on. When the van driver signaled for a right turn into a shopping center, we slowed a bit to avoid getting too close. However, as we passed, we had a perfect view of the license plate. Kelsey wrote it down, and we felt much safer now that we were in the clear.
Just as the volume in the back seat started to rise, my cell phone rang. Kelsey answered it and let me know it was the police. Again, our car went silent.
This officer had a ton of questions. He wanted to know where the van was now. He also wanted me to describe the van again. Proudly I told him the girls had gotten the plate number, and we gave him the information. The next question he asked totally took me by surprise. He said, “Could you go back and follow the van into the shopping center and let us know where it goes?”
HECK NO! That was absolutely not going to happen. I told him I had an 11-year-old and two fifteen-year-old kids in my car and would not be doing that. So, the call ended, and we went on our way.
And that was it. We never heard or read anything else about it.
Once we picked up Kelsey’s jacket, we finished our errands and headed home. We made up all kinds of stories as to what happened in that shopping center. Did we prevent a robbery? Did our tips help capture a bad guy or two? We were left with so many questions. But I realized later that we could sum up what we most wanted to know in a single question. Did we make a difference? We will never know, but I hope we did.
There will be times when we are simply minding our own business but somehow find ourselves smack in the middle of someone else’s circumstance. It can be hard to determine if it’s a problem or an opportunity.
Helping others when we can is just the right thing to do, but we don’t always have to be in the thick of things to make a difference. Sometimes it’s better to move to the sidelines and help from there, where it’s safer. Sometimes it’s not our job to be front and center.
Many times, how we help is a choice. Every little bit helps. We can choose to handle a situation with a megaphone, or we can quietly help from the back seat.
Wishing you joy and peace,
Lorrie
He who guards his mouth and his tongue, guards his soul from troubles. Proverbs 21:23