Every Sunday for as long as I can remember we visited Grandma Johnson. Sunday wouldn't be Sunday without that. Sometimes we met other family members there at the same time, sometimes we got Grandma all to ourselves. One Sunday Russell and Stephen were having a particularly rambunctious time out in Grandma's backyard while the girls and I visited with Grandma inside. The boys got carried away, and broke one of her lawn chairs. Even though Grandma insisted it was OK I determined to buy her a new one as soon as I could.
The next day was Memorial Day, so after taking Grandma to the Cemetery to put flowers on Grandpa's grave, we dropped her off at home and then went to the K-Mart by her house to buy her a new chair.
When we pulled into the parking lot I noticed it was pretty empty. The kids and I got out of our car, I put Stephen in a pushcart, then the other kids and I started walking to the store. The parking lot was empty except for two men walking by us. One man in front was kind of small and had on a bright blue jump-suit. The fellow following him was also thin, but taller, and he was wearing a pinstriped dress shirt.
Just as we came up to the second man, I heard him say, "I Know you've got them. Stop!"
To my disbelief, the fellow in the jump suit turned around and pulled out a knife!
“This has got to be a joke,” I thought, “or else they're friends and just kidding around.”
I was standing maybe ten feet away from them, but the rest of my kids were all around them.
"If this isn't a joke, I've got to get the kids out of here!" I thought, so I yelled at them to run to the store. Thank goodness they listened to me and took off toward the building. I had to go around the two men to get there, but I pushed on by them with Stephen.
By this time the men were arguing. The first guy took off running further into the parking lot and the second man followed him. As he ran, he yelled over his shoulder, "Call the cops!"
I ran towards the sidewalk, calling to some people standing there to call the police. They just stared at me. I called to them a second time to call the police, but still no one moved. Linnea, my twelve year old, finally made it to the phone booth and called 911.
When I got to her she was trying to explain what was happening. Taking the phone from her I told the operator, “We are at K-Mart, and there are two guys in the parking lot fighting. One of them has a big knife.”
The operator didn't sound too impressed, so I repeated the story and emphasized that the man, by this time I'd decided he must be a security guard, had told us to call the police. When I said security guard all of a sudden she came alive and said she'd send the police and hung up.
Meanwhile, the fight was still going on in the parking lot. The guy in the jumpsuit was trying to get away in a blue and white pick-up, but the security guard was struggling with him and it looked like some men from the parking lot were helping. Finally a bunch of other security guards came running from the store and finally they were able to restrain him.
When they brought the guy in the jumpsuit back into the store they walked right past us. The fellow's nose and face were all red and banged up and the security guard was being really rough with him. "You're mine, now!" he declared as he shoved him through the doors.
Well, when it was all over we went on into K-Mart, though all of us were shaking, and bought our chairs. We tried to find out what had happened, but no one seemed to know. All that day we talked about our experience, figuring we'd never know the whole story, so you can imagine my surprise the following morning when mom showed us the front page of the newspaper. There was our security guard and the whole story!
The crook was an escaped convict. He'd come to K-Mart to steal some tennis shoes and get rid of his prison sandals. He was in prison for attempted murder! But the paper never mentioned the little girl that called 911, or the mom with five kids that the men ran through.
We came closer to disaster that day than ever been before, or at least that I've known about. That man could easily have grabbed one of the kids and used them as a shield to get away.
Russell really hit the nail on the head when on the way home he said, “Heavenly Father sure was protecting us!”
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