What Were You Thinking, Luv?

The SO and I witnessed a robbery at an ATM last week. It wasn't like in the movies; there was no big guy waving a gun, no threatening people, no shouting; it was much more subtle.

We went to the cash machine about 9.30pm. This was in a crowded mall parking lot, with lots of lighting and lots of people around. There was a little old lady standing there, having just finished up her business. In her car was a girl who looked about ten years old. As we pulled up, we noticed a young guy, holding a t-shirt, approach the little old lady and start to talk to her. The SO commented to me, "I hope that guy doesn't think he's washing windows at THIS time of night."

I parked and got out to get cash. As I'm doing that, I can faintly hear the guy urging the little old lady, "c'mon, c'mon let's GO!". Something about his tone of voice gave me the bad vibe heebie-jeebies and I turned around to see what was going on. He opened her car door, shoved the little girl over to the middle, got in, and slammed the door. The little girl looked absolutely terrified and the little old lady was looking very grim. I became extremely alarmed and glance over to see that the SO had been watching them and waved for me to hurry up.

The young guy could obviously see that we were suspicious, because he rolled the window down and yelled, "It's okay, she knows me, she's just giving me a ride, it's okay". The little girl was staring at me through the windshield, as if to say "HELP!", as they peeled out of the parking lot. I managed to get most of the license plate as the SO shouted, "He's hiding something in that shirt!" As he called 911, we tried to follow them, but lost them in traffic. The SO gave the police all the information we could remember and they promised to put out an APB.

I tell you, I was worried sick; the look in that little girls eyes was haunting; the SO assured me that we had done all we could have at the time, but I still felt awful. We started for home and not five minutes down the road, the SO shouts, "It's her car! Pull over!". The man has the eyes of an eagle. Sure enough, there's the car, sitting in the parking lot of a gas station. We pulled up next to it and were overjoyed to see the little old lady and little girl sitting there looking shell-shocked, but unharmed.

Now here's the startling, yet cautionary, part of the tale; it turns out that the young guy had spun a sob-story to the little old lady. He told her that his car had run out of gas, with his young 3 month old baby in it, and he needed her to drive him back to it; and, oh yeah, he was going to need money to buy gas with when he got there.

She willingly let him get into her car, with her 10 year old granddaughter along for the ride. She finally got suspicious when he told her to drive down a dirt road; she questioned him again on his story, and lo and behold, he revealed that he was holding a can of "Raid" in the t-shirt!

Thankfully, there was a gas station next to the road he wanted to go down; there she stopped and refused to go any further. At that point, he menaced her with his can of Raid, relieved her of all her cash, and legged it.

She said to us, "I just didn't want a little baby to be all alone in a car, I KNOW I shouldn't have let him into the car, his story just didn't sound right. My daughter works for the Police Department, she's going to kill me". Yes, I think you're right on that point, Grandma; you put her child in serious danger, she's gonna be really pissed when she finds out.

While we were immensely relieved that all she lost was cash, I did want to shake that old lady quite hard for being so gullible. Who knows what that guy had originally planned?

LISTEN to your gut instinct; if a situation doesn't seem right, it's because IT'S NOT.

Don't be afraid to take action or call for help. You can always apologize if you were wrong; I once whacked a guy upside the head with a Tesco bag of baked beans at a deserted Stockport bus station because he ran up right behind me from a distance. He was extremely surprised and blurted, "I'm just running to catch my bus!" As we watched his bus drive away, I told him I was sincerely sorry and gave him a blistering lecture on getting too close behind a lone woman . I will bet good money he never did that again.

It's always better to be safe than sorry. Take care of yourselves out there!