Not on My Watch

I hadn’t seen my old English teacher, Ms. Alvarez, in years. I was driving north on Sepulveda Blvd, just past Santa Monica Blvd and I saw her walking south. I was driving a white Escalade. I saw a dark SUV pull up next to her. She ran into the parking lot of a building. The SUV left and I pulled up. As she saw me, I asked her how she’d been and if she wanted to hang out.

She said yes and got into the passenger’s side. I had my kids with me, two girls, 11 and 6 years old. Alvarez said she had an appointment to go to first and then we could go grab lunch and catch up. I offered to drive her since it was nearby and she looked worried about going by herself.

I drove her to a place that looked like Hollywood and Highland. There was no place to park, so we went into a parking garage for what looked like a mall or fancy hotel. We drove up to the 6th floor and still couldn’t find parking, so we left the Cadillac there and walked her to her appointment on the 1st floor.

My girls got comfortable, but we were illegally parked, so I rushed them off with me while we left Alvarez at her appointment. She asked me to leave the girls with her twice and twice, I said no. We went back to the elevator. I was worried about the car getting towed. Two men walked up to the elevator on opposite sides of us. My 6-year-old was closest to the elevator button and the 11-year-old was on the other side with me in the middle of the two. Still waiting for the elevator to open, the man closest to my youngest suddenly grabbed her in a bear hug and she started yelling. I asked him what he was doing and he said with a smile that almost looked genuine, “What do you mean? This is my child.”

My daughter still yelling, I said, “She’s not, and you know it.” I managed to free her of his grip and we ran up to the stairs 6th floor.

My 6-year-old was ahead with my 11-year-old behind her, the man who’d tried to snatch my 6-year-old behind the 11-year-old, and the other man behind me. I told them to run as fast as they could and they did, but the man ahead of me was gaining ground.

I remembered the pocket knife I always carry, took it out, and slashed into his calf all the way down to his ankle. He yelled. My oldest stopped in shock and I told her to keep going.

The other man was still behind us but was slowed down by his shock, we reached the 6th floor where a group of people was standing between us and our car. They walked up slowly saying they were concerned and wanted to make sure everything was ok because they saw our car abandoned. I told them to let us through, but soon realized they were with the 2 men we were running away from. I was afraid of what would happen if we couldn’t get in the car to drive away, but it didn’t seem possible to get through them all, so I told the girls to run back down the stairs, passing the man who’d kept chasing us. I put the knife in his face and he let us pass. We passed the man whose leg I’d sliced as he was losing consciousness. I told my girls not to look and we kept running.

July 27/28, 2021