Today, I am going to tell you a true story about my friend Anna, who roughly 20 years ago didn’t lock her patio door.
I am writing this with her permission and her help to make sure I have my information correct. Anna is from Russia, came to the United States in 2002 and got her citizenship in 2011. Anna was a very trusting person and lived in a gated community. She enjoyed her family, friends and work, and never thought for a second that she could be a victim of a crime.
She worked at an upscale hair salon in Alpharetta, GA, and one of the first things she did when she got home was to take a shower to "remove the day's work" (hair). One evening around 6:00 pm, she had finished her after-work ritual and was heading to her bedroom to get some comfy clothes on when she noticed that all of her dresser drawers were open.
I asked her “Were you scared?” She said that “I was perplexed, not scared.” You see, since she never thought “It could happen to me,” she could not comprehend that there was a person in her apartment while she was at a very vulnerable part of her day: naked in the shower.
She realized that someone had ransacked her apartment in the 45 minutes she was indisposed and then quickly got dressed. She then walked around her apartment to see if someone was still there. I asked her “What was your plan?” She said, “I had no plan, no weapon and no clue what she would do if someone was still there.”
She called her next-door neighbor first and he called 911. The police came, interviewed Anna, and wrote up a report. Once the event was over and she was alone once again, only then did she realize how lucky she really was.
I would like for you to put yourself in her place 20 years ago. Think about how you saw the world back then. Would you have been confused as well? Would you have reacted similar?
She and I talked about who she was then, who she is now and about the decisions she would make in present time. You see, not a week after the break-in, she went to a local firearms range and started her journey into personal protection. She states that “Back then, the focus was all about the gun, where today it’s all about using the correct amount of force at the proper distance, in the context on the situation.”
Here are a few bullet points with some of the "pre-need" decisions she wished she knew then:
- Always lock all your doors.
- Have the mindset that it can happen to you.
- Have a plan.
- Where is your firearm? Is it in a safe? Is it in the bathroom with you? Is it carried off body and is still in the bag? Do you live alone so it is just sitting on the counter? Make your “pre-need” decisions now, before you need to put them into action.
- Once able, leave the apartment as quick possible, because the bad guy may still be in the house.
- After you are in a safe place, call 911.
The reason I am telling you this story is because I went to Anna’s salon this week and when I got to her studio, it was locked. I knocked and she yelled “come on in” in her adorable Russian accent! I yelled back “I can’t, it’s locked”. I could hear her laughing as she headed my way and as she opened the door she said, “Better safe than sorry!” Lessons were learned 20 years ago, and now she is a firearms instructor and a decision coach that is helping others.
She finished up with saying that “We ask our children to look both ways before they cross the street. That is a simple ‘ask’ to try to keep our kids safe. Don’t we owe it to ourselves to do an equally simple ‘ask’ and lock your doors at all times?”
