Author: Wes Blalock

Secret Police

I used to live in an area that bordered three jurisdictions. The Sheriff’s Office and two city police departments patrolled the neighborhoods around my home. I have been involved in training police officers since my fifth year at my agency and I know that the simple act of running from the police is not cause for detention and often young officers had to be reminded of this fact, so as you read my story, please understand that my intent in the following actions is “helping.” At 4 A.M. when I was jogging in my neighborhood, if I saw a police car, from any agency, I would turn and start sprinting in the opposite direction, just to see if I could get an officer to “alert” and give chase, like a racing greyhound.

Usually, they would pause for a moment, assess the situation, and watch me run away. Once, however, one of the police cars sped up, pulled alongside me and hit me with the spotlight, while in motion.

“Sergeant Blalock!” a voice called out. “Isn’t this above your speed limit?”

It was one of my former students. I stopped and, huffing and puffing with my hands on my knees, explained that I was trying to keep my exercise regimen secret.

Rainy Day Sunday

For some reason, it was a very busy, rainy day. I only had two officers, other than myself, on duty and we seemed to be running from priority call to priority call. No time for chit-chat, no time for report writing. One of my officers was on a call at a nearby 7–11 and was just finishing up with the reporting party when we got a priority call at the library. I was with the only other officer on a dispute call in one of the residence halls that involved several people, but the officer seemed to have everything under control. The officer at the 7–11, got in his car and took off to the library, but his car fish-tailed on the wet asphalt and he struck a parked car. Unfortunately, the priority call took precedence, so he notified dispatch what he’d just done and continued to his call.

The owner of the car happened to be walking toward his car when he saw a police car spin around and slam into his car…and then drive away. I walked to the scene from the residence hall and found the owner of the car, near tears, talking to his father on the phone, trying to explain that a police car really did hit his car and drive away. No, really. At first, he didn’t comprehend that I already knew what had happened and he began to try to convince me that one of my officers had just hit his car. I told him that I knew, and that I was there to complete the collision report.

As I started to get information from him for the report, he asked, “Are you going to find the officer at fault?”

I looked at his parked car, pushed up against the curb. “I don’t know how I could possibly find a parked car at fault.”

Funny, Ha Ha

I stopped a car for speeding. I approached the driver and saw that she was very anxious. She said that she was sorry, that she knew she was speeding, and explained that she was running late for work. Out of curiosity, I asked where she worked. She told me at The Improv. Assuming that she was a server, and thinking that I was very funny, I asked, “What, are you a comedian?”

She said that she was, in fact, the opening act. Oh, she is a comedian. I stared at her for a moment and then, in my sternest voice, said, “Say something funny.”

Her mouth dropped open as she searched for words.

I smiled and said, “Please slow down, we have a lot of pedestrians here. And please be kind when you make fun of me during your set tonight.”

She laughed and went on her way. I wish I remembered her name, so that I could have kept track of her comedy career.

I find that police officers don’t know how to admit when they are wrong. Part of it is because we are taught not to; take a position and stand your ground. In the words of Cmdr. Peter Quincy Taggart, “Never give up, never surrender.” But we all know that is one of the things that least endears us to the members of our community. And we all know that we have been wrong.

Besides the incidents of pulling people over for expired registration, just to realize that the sticker on their car is not six years old, but is actually next year’s color, or thinking we were on a 25 MPH street and then looking up at the sign and realizing that we had crossed into a 35 MPH zone, or even when what I thought was headphones was actually a hearing aid, there was one time that I was truly and embarrassingly wrong.

I saw a student driving around with a car with dealer plates. No big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I began to notice it every day. This seemed odd to me that he would constantly have dealer plates on his car, so I researched the code that governed dealer plates. It seems that only the owner of the dealership or employees of the dealership could drive around with dealer plates on their cars. I decided to investigate this heinous crime of dealer plate fraud.

The student’s father owned the dealership to which the plates had been issued, so it appeared that he was skirting the law by allowing his son to drive around with dealer plates so that he didn’t have to pay registration fees. Unless he was paying his son as an employee. The next time I saw the student, I pulled him over and spoke to him. I asked him if he was an employee of the dealership. He said that he was not. I asked him about the purpose of the dealer plates. He became very scared and said that he could not talk to me without talking with his father first.

At this time, because he refused to talk to me any further, which in my mind was an indicator of guilt, I wrote him a criminal citation. But what I mistook as an indicator of guilt was actually just fear that he was somehow getting his father in trouble, because he didn’t know the answers to my questions. And then he refused to sign the citation. Unfortunately, if someone doesn’t sign a citation, we take them into custody and book them into jail. As I put handcuffs on him, his eyes were literally bugging out of his head.

I took him to the police station to process him when he agreed to sign the citation. That’s better, now I don’t have to take him to jail. I cited him and off he went, leaving behind his dealer plates in my custody as evidence.

About two hours later, I was called into my Lieutenant’s office. The Lieutenant told me that he had just gotten off the phone with the kid’s father, the owner of the dealership, and the father was very, very, very, very angry. I thought, well, then don’t commit fraud. But it seems that the father had actually gotten in trouble once before for this very same thing, so he…

Did everyone catch the question that I did not ask the young man?

…made his wife and children all partners in the dealership. They were all owners. It was completely legal for the young man to drive around with the dealer plates, he just didn’t know why, so he couldn’t tell me. I had actually falsely arrested someone when no crime had been committed. I was wrong.

While the department attorneys discussed an appropriate settlement amount, I wrote a two page apology letter to the young man and another one page apology letter to father. For the son, I specifically ended it with the fact that I hoped that the clearly negative impression that I left on him would not reflect on the other many fine police officers that had not made the same mistake I had and that he wouldn’t be afraid to seek help from the police in the future.

The following week, the Lieutenant called me in, again. I was expecting a Letter of Reprimand, minimum, and possibly a suspension. The Lieutenant told me that both the father and son had stopped by and had accepted my apology, that they understood my explanation of events and that no further action was necessary. Bullet dodged.

But I never made a mistake like that again.

I have decided to write about the time that I, personally, called the police…on accident. Several years ago, I was living in a four-bedroom townhouse in a moderately-sized, suburban city that we will call “Souptown.” I was living with my wife and four young children, so it was a relatively full house, but we always had room for more. On this particular occasion, we were hosting my wife’s cousin, Rosa, and her two small children. Rosa had recently made the emotional and traumatic decision to leave her husband and my wife had generously offered her shelter in our domicile.  

Now there are a lot of moving parts in this story, so I’ll try to keep things straight. To start, I decided to call my father in North Carolina and chat with him and the area code for his part of North Carolina is 919. That’s important and this is a story involving a landline, so if you don’t remember how landlines work, you’ll have difficulty with this story. Anywho, I called my dad, but the call didn’t go through because one of the buttons was sticking. I tried again, but the same thing happened, no completed call. Finally, third time’s a charm, but a few minutes into my conversation, the Call Waiting signal beeped, letting me know that I had someone on the other line. I asked my dad to excuse me and switched calls.

Very polite, professional voice. “Sir, this is the Souptown Police Department, did you call 9-1-1?”

Me. “Um, no. I didn’t…(and then something occurred to me. The button on the phone that was sticking, was the 1 button…oh no)…oh, wait. I bet I called 9-1-1 and hung up twice, didn’t I?”

Very polite, professional voice. “Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, you did call 9-1-1 twice and hang up. Is everything okay there in the house?”

We had a very constructive conversation about my phone’s failure and that nothing was going on in the house. I was asked by the dispatcher if she could speak to anyone else, but my wife was in the shower and Rosa, who is naturally kind of volatile, was busy changing her baby’s diaper, upstairs. My younger son, Bronson, who was seven at the time, spoke to the dispatcher for a moment or two. And then we were done. I switched back to my dad and told him I would call him back later, because, even though the dispatcher didn’t say to expect a visit, I knew better.

I was already walking toward the front door when I heard the hard, staccato knock. I opened the door immediately to two of Souptown’s finest (I had worked for Souptown Police Department as a records clerk while I was in college and had attended training with several of their officers over the years). There was a young, officer, who was all pressed and shiny, accompanied by an older officer with a more rumpled, experienced look. And that means that the young officer was on field training.

The trainer cocked his head slightly and said, “Hi, Sgt. Blalock.”

The trainee looked confused, so the trainer explained, “Sgt. Blalock works for the University police.”

And now the trainee looked even more confused, especially as I smiled and waved. “Hi.”

And then the three of us stared at each other for a moment. The trainer looked at the trainee and asked, “What are you supposed to be doing?”

The trainee collected himself and explained about the 9-1-1 hangups and asked all the same questions the dispatcher had. I answered the questions exactly the same and then waited.

For a moment, we all stared at each other, until the trainer asked, “What are we doing here?”

The trainee started to ask the trainer a question, but the trainer looked at him and asked, “What would you do if he weren’t a cop?”

“Oh.” The trainee looked at me and gulped. “May I come in and look around? Make sure everyone is safe?”

“No problem.” I stepped aside to allow the officers in, but the trainer waited on the doorstep.

“You’re good to go,” the trainer said. “I’ll wait here for you.”

The trainee asked me who else was in the house. I told him that my four children were in the house, my wife was in the shower, upstairs, and my wife’s aunt and her two children were in the house as well. It was a pretty full house.

Although I waited with the trainer, I will describe what occurred from that point on based on witness statements I obtained later.

The trainee checked the rest of the first floor and didn’t find anyone, so he asked if he could go upstairs. I said that he could and reminded him that my wife was in the shower.

Remember, that at this time, Rosa is upstairs, changing her baby’s diaper. And even though she is my wife’s aunt, she is actually four years younger than Mia. As she is finishing up with the diaper changing ritual, she sees a police officer stop outside the door to the bedroom.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, shocked.

“Oh,” the young officer responded. “Your husband called 9-1-1.”

Think about that for just a minute. The officer assumed that Rosa was my wife, but now Rosa thinks that the husband that she just left…forever…has called the police on her.

“Why the hell did he call 9-1-1?” Rosa shouted, getting very defensive and agitated.

“I don’t know,” the officer responded, getting very nervous. “He’s downstairs…”

“Why is he here?!” Rosa was now getting seriously alarmed that her soon to be ex-husband was downstairs with the police and some kind of devious plan.

“Your husband…Sgt. Blalock…he…uh…” I am told by my children that the officer looked as though he was going to jump down to the first floor to escape Rosa.

“Blalock?” Rosa paused. “No, he’s my nephew. He called 9-1-1?”

Now visibly relieved that he wasn’t stepping into the middle of some kind of domestic violence situation, the young officer explained about the accidental 9-1-1 call and Rosa calmly told him that Mia was in the shower and that all the kids were playing in the upstairs bedrooms, so nothing criminal was going on.

The officers concluded that everything was fine and went on their way, although I noticed a second unit arrive, turn around and leave, so I later wondered if the young officer had called for backup.

Either way, it was the kind of experience that led to a great story.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve made an entry, but I was really trying to manage my mental health while trapped in my house. However, recently, parts of my family were able to be together in a properly masked and socially distant manner, so I thought I would share some memories for which I am very Thankful.

My Flying Tiger

My wife is amazing at finding things in thrift stores. She has bought a six thousand dollar couch for just one hundred dollars and a limited edition Disney lithograph for just twenty dollars. Not because she is extremely knowledgeable about the value of things, but because she has an innate ability to recognize that something seems valuable. Just amazing.

On one occasion, we had just dropped off my youngest at college, having moved her into her dorm and were getting ready for the long drive home. My wife decided to stop at a local thrift store, because my daughter needed a few more pieces of inexpensive furniture, so in we went. My wife picked out a few items that I carried out to the car and when I returned, she showed me a framed photo that she had found. She said that she knew I liked “WWII stuff” and handed it to me. While the glass from the frame was a bit grimy, I could see that it was an autographed photo of three Flying Tiger airplanes, signed by three pilots. I recognized one of the signatures as Charles Older, the presiding judge at the Manson Family trials. I bought that photo for three dollars.

I took the photo home and cleaned it up and found a Certification of Authenticity in the back. A little surprised, I took my three dollar find to an appraiser, who told me it was easily worth $250.

Very nice. It sits on the wall in my office now.

Thanks, honey.

Doomsday Prepping

There was actually a time when this country had real plans on how to manage a pandemic, however, it was for fear of bioterrorism. I had a discussion with the Emergency Management Coordinator many years ago, where he outlined the county’s plan to vaccinate first responders quickly following a bioterrorism attack (assuming we had a vaccine). Either way, part of the plan that I read said that we would not be able to tell our families what was going on, we could tell them that there was an emergency, but nothing else. So I made arrangements with my kids that if I called them and gave them a signal, they were to evacuate to a safe location (no, I’m not telling you where). I was discussing this with all four kids, who happened to be at the house at the same time, as at least two were adults and had moved out, when Mia overheard us.

She asked why she wasn’t involved in the discussion. I asked her what she would do if I called her and told her to evacuate to a safe location without explaining why. She said, “Nothing, I need to know why.” I nodded then turned to Bryant and asked him what his assignment was, he said, “Grab mom and make her go with us.”

Several years later, I was coming home from work at about 3 A.M. I climbed out of my car and was walking to the front door of the house when I heard a phone ringing, distantly. I immediately checked my cell phone and saw that I had butt dialed Bryant. I hung up and hoped that I had gotten it before it woke Bryant up. As I was unlocking the front door, Bryant called. I answered the phone prepared to explain and apologize, but Bryant spoke first.

“Is this it, Dad? Do I need to grab mom and run for the hills? Zombie Apocalypse Time?”

No, but its good to know you are out there and ready to go.

By the way, have I told you all that Bryant is an actor? Check out his IMDB page.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10937506/

A Wrong Number

My older daughter asked me if I could drive her to a birthday party, as this happened during her middle school years, before she was able to drive. I agreed. No problem as none of her friends lived too far away and even though I was lazy, I could take a few minutes out of my day to deliver Jade to a birthday party. We jumped into the minivan and headed down the street, Jade holding a wrapped birthday present on her lap. It only took about five minutes to reach the correct house and Jade kissed me on the cheek and hopped out.

As a good dad, I waited until she reached the front door before I drove away. Don’t want her to go missing like my youngest daughter was destined to do many years later, as explained in a previous post, “Missing.”

For some reason, I did not just drive away when the host’s door opened, like a normally would have. I sat and watched while Jade and her friend and the friend’s mother spoke for a few minutes. Jade then handed off the present to her friend and walked back to the van, waving to her friend.

Jade climbed back into the minivan and looked straight ahead. “Just drive.”

Okay. I started driving and when we reached a main street, I asked, “What happened?”

Jade took a deep breath. “I made a mistake. The party is tomorrow. I told them I wasn’t going to be able to make it, so I came over to deliver the gift today.”

“Wow,” I said. “That was quick thinking. What would you have done if I had just driven away like normal?”

“I don’t know. Cry?”

We bonded that day in a way we never had.

An Engineering Dispute

My younger son was born to be an engineer. When he got is first career-track job out of college with Hewlett Packard, in their Quality Assurance Division, I was not surprised in the least. The idea that he would be deconstructing things as a career seemed only natural. When he was very young, he was constantly deconstructing things in our household.

He saw that the rake was lying in the back yard, with the tines down, so he stood on it and bounced, until the handle broke. I had to go to Ace Hardware to get a new handle.

He liked to hang on the bannister at our stairwell, even though every time I saw him, I told him not to. He would ask why and I would tell him that he was going to pull it out of the wall. No I won’t, he said. And then the bannister collapsed, three inch screws sticking out of the end where it had once been attached.

He drove his toy car in laps around the outside of our brand new minivan, leaving irregular racing stripes gouged into the paint.

He sawed divots into his mother’s desk.

His analytical mind was always working, like the time he watched me playing with our 15 year old dachshund as we bounced around the living room.

“Hmmmm,” he said.

“What?” I asked him.

“Oh, I was just thinking. Who’s going to have a heart attack first.”

A keen analytical mind.

Frytastrophe

My youngest daughter likes to dip her french fries into her chocolate milkshake. The first time I saw this I realized that I had to have a talk with her about appropriate french fry etiquette.

Me: You can’t dip french fries in your chocolate shake. It’s disgusting.

Daughter: Why is it disgusting?

Me: Chocolate milkshakes are sweet.

Daughter: So is ketchup.

Me: But it’s also a dairy product.

Daughter: So is ranch dressing, and plenty of restaurants serve french fries with ranch dressing.

Me: (struggling for a new argument) But it’s both!

Daughter: (staring at me like I’m the crazy person) Okay, Dad. (Very deliberately dipping her french fry into her chocolate shake and eating it).

When I was assigned to the library, supervising the civilian security staff, I spent a lot of time taking police reports and interacting with the varied populations that inhabited the library from opening to closing, including the wave of homeless people that entered the building every day. On one particular occasion, I spoke to a man (we’ll call Keith) who had been the witness to a crime and obtained his information, but hours later, something kept nagging at the back of my brain.

Finally, I realized that he and I were in the same high school class (we didn’t travel in the same circles, as I was all drama club and dungeons and dragons and he was an athlete and hung out with the cool kids). I returned to the floor where I had found him and asked him if he had attended San Martin High School (at least that’s what we’ll call it) and he confirmed that he had. I asked if he was class of 1984 and he said that he was. I told him my name and asked if he remembered me. He paused a minute, then he said, “You were the morning announcements guy, from drama. You were funny.”

Well, it was good for something. I remembered Keith as an open and gregarious guy, who had been voted most likely to succeed. One of the very few black people in my very whitewashed school (there should have been a lot of Hispanic kids-there wasn’t). I remember his very pretty girlfriend even better. I asked how he had been and what he had been up to. Keith then launched into a manifesto of how the FBI had been tracking him since he was in college and how they were now preventing him from returning home with an invisible psychic barrier and that he hadn’t seen his family in years. And I realized that he was homeless, and why.

After talking with him, I returned to my office and checked the internet for his parents. I found his mom and gave her a call, not sure what kind of reception I would receive, but making the call anyway. He did talk about how much he missed his mom, but apparently there was a national security reason preventing him from visiting her. When she answered, I didn’t want to scare her, as I am certain she was dreading a call from the police with news of her son. I have children; if one of them was missing, and I got a call from the police that started off with “Mr. Blalock? Are you the father of (missing child here)? Yes, we have some bad news.”

I started off with “Hi, I went to school with Keith. I happen to be a university police officer and Keith is here in the library, as we speak.” From there, I learned that Keith had attended college and had obtained a degree in Civil Engineering, but that he began to have some difficulties in his final year that seemed odd, but didn’t require intervention. It wasn’t until he started working for a prestigious engineering firm, that his mental health issues truly began to manifest, until he couldn’t maintain the job and had to move home. His family couldn’t force him to take his prescribed medications and he was certain that the doctors were really trying to poison him. And then he left, and his mom couldn’t make him stay.

After that conversation, whenever I saw Keith in the library, I called his mom and let her know. She would arrive soon after (within the hour) and take him out to lunch, get him a motel room where he could shower and put on new clothes that she had bought him. And then my assignment changed and I saw him less and less.

A couple of years later, one of my officers was busy towing a car for unpaid registration when the owner, a faculty member, showed up. She panicked. She ran to the car to prevent it from getting towed and I stopped her and she fell down (I absolutely did not knock her down or tackle her). She was still panicked and had to be detained; I arrested her for resisting and delaying a police officer and had her driven to the police station while her car was towed. She was later released with a citation.

Her influential friends began protests and a petition to have me fired. I don’t care what anyone tells you about ignoring them or that they can’t do anything, since you did everything you were supposed to do, this is a very stressful situation. Very. The university newspaper and the student TV news station did stories. Fortunately for me, there was no interest by the mainstream media.

One night, I had signed up for a special event and was in the street conducting traffic control, when I saw Keith on the sidewalk, watching me, waiting. I left the street and met him up on the sidewalk, greeting him and letting him know that he looked well.

Like some poetic, wandering sage from a knights and wizards novel, he smiled knowingly and said, “Wes, I’ve been looking for you. I read what happened in the paper. I want to know that what they are saying about you isn’t about you at all. It’s all about some fictional Wes Blalock they made up in their heads and they are talking about him, not you.”

Then he patted me on the shoulder and disappeared into the darkness. Those words; I found what he said to be very comforting, a very helpful piece of advice that got me through a very difficult time.

I am from a generation where we reasonably feared, and secretly yearned for, an Earth-shattering, apocalyptic event. You can see this in the movies of our time (Mad Max, Escape From New York, Damnation Alley, Planet of the Apes, A Boy and His Dog, Logan’s Run, and The Omega Man, to name but a few). Out of that amazing genre, one of the most memorable post-apocalyptic fictions of my (I want to say childhood, but I was thirteen when this came out) formative years, was Thundarr the Barbarian. If you don’t know this Saturday morning cartoon, this is the amazing trailer. (It really is just the trailer).

What better apocalypse can there be than a runaway planet ripping the Earth and Moon asunder (I blame Pluto. After years of being bullied by the Earth, it decided to get back at us for ostracizing it from the rest of the Solar System). And two thousand years later, people have survived, but some have turned science into magic, how cool is that? Thundarr the Barbarian burned a place into my psyche and and my heart, and while it is incredibly cheesy when I watch an episode or two now, and the animation was cheap and stilted, it really fed my imagination.

So when I saw this book sitting on the shelf of my local thrift store…

…I had to have it. Was this the book that the cartoon was actually based on? Was it a novelization of the TV series? I wasn’t sure. The book was written ten years before the cartoon series premiered, so it likely came first, and TV Thundarr looked startlingly similar to book cover Thundar, so there was enough connection for me to spend the $2.95 to buy this book and check it out (Interestingly enough, the cover price of this 1971 publication was 75 cents-it had already almost quadrupled in price, a sound investment).

Fortunately, when I read this book, I had already developed a serious working knowledge of the books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, from Tarzan, and the Princess of Mars, to the Pellucidar Series, and the Time Forgot books. When you grow up needing dinosaurs in your life, Burroughs is a good place to start. Of course, now every kid has Michael Crichton and the Jurassic Park books and movies. Spoiled. Either way, the book Thundar: Man of Two Worlds, is what we would now call fan fiction, by author Stuart J. Byrne writing under the name John Bloodstone, melding many of the worlds and even the story-telling style of Burroughs together into this tome (I needed an alternate word for book, but 192 pages is a tiny tome).

It wasn’t a bad book, but it wasn’t John Carter tearing up Barsoom, either (and that Disney movie with Taylor Kitsch was way better than people gave it credit for). While Thundar: Man of Two Worlds had a princess and a primate-like sidekick, and scientists whose powers rivaled sorcerers, it didn’t have the breadth nor imagination of the Saturday morning cartoon. I’m glad I read it, and I couldn’t really tell you unequivocally that the cartoon was based on the book, but if it was, I would use the word inspired, at best.

And as far as a sound investment, this is what I found on eBay.

But this is what I found on Amazon.

Either way, I think I’m going to hold onto this sound investment.

See, I’m not the only one. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch a few Thundarr episodes, if I can find them on YouTube.

I was on routine patrol at about 10 A.M. when I saw a car stopped in the traffic lane, with its emergency blinkers flashing. I pulled in behind it and saw that there was no one inside, so I ran the license plate and prepared to tow the car out of the traffic lane. The dispatcher immediately told me that the vehicle was stolen. That wasn’t something I expected, but I got out of my car and started filling out my paperwork to recover the stolen vehicle. As the dispatcher gave me the information I needed about the vehicle, he asked me, “Do you want to know who stole the car?”

Well, that’s new. I told him that I did. “The report says that the suspect is Bob Sanders, white, male, adult, six foot two inches, 180 pounds, wearing a blue cotton, button-up, long sleeve shirt and tan slacks.”

I acknowledged the report and looked up and saw a white, male, adult, about six foot two, 180 pounds, wearing a blue cotton, button-up, long sleeve shirt and tan slacks. He saw me and hesitated, then started to turn down a side-street.

I called out, “Mr. Sanders, can you talk to me for a moment?”

Sanders’ whole body sagged as he stopped and turned to walk over to me.

I placed him under arrest for vehicle theft, handcuffed him, and put him in my car.

Now, my county engaged in a sort of competition during the holidays in which all the law enforcement agencies would try to arrest the most DUI drivers. This was highly publicized in an effort to reduce DUI incidents altogether. This incident occurred during that competition time frame. When I returned to the police station with him and read him his Miranda Rights, he agreed to talk to me. (Never do that, by the way. Ask for a lawyer). He explained that the vehicle was his employer’s and he had been sent out to pick up some materials. Instead, he found himself in a bar with some of his friends and they drank and did drugs into the wee hours of the morning.

Drinking, you say. Doing drugs, you say. Hmmmm.

I asked him to perform field sobriety exercises and he failed miserably. I added the charge of DUI, based solely on his statement, because, well, it was that time of year.

Months later, in court for his preliminary hearing, I was on the stand to testify. His attorney, who appeared fairly young, approached and asked me (in a condescending tone), “Sgt. Blalock, as a University police officer, how many DUI arrests have you actually made in your career?”

I’m certain that she was expecting me to answer, “Well, I’ve seen the CHP do it a couple of times, but I haven’t really had to do it myself.”

But instead, my answer was, “Ummm, about 300.”

This flustered her and her eyes got big; her whole defense of the incompetent investigator had vanished. She shuffled through her reports and her notes and she regrouped and asked, “Sgt. Blalock, my client was on S. 4th Street when you stopped him. Do you usually patrol this far off the university campus?”

The prosecuting attorney actually started laughing out loud, as University police in California have authority anywhere in the State as state police. And S. 4^th Street bordered the campus. The defense attorney withdrew her question.

I learned later that he simply plead guilty to all the charges, including the DUI. I had never even seen him in the vehicle, much less driving. He definitely deserved a better attorney.

Did I ever tell you about the time I lost my child? I’m not talking about when they are hiding inside a circular stand of clothing at Target or when you turn around at the amusement park and realize that they followed someone else, thinking they were you, no. I’m talking about something completely different.

My wife was working for a scrapbooking company and had a business trip to Dallas for a week, leaving me to manage the household of four children, which should have been no problem considering the two older kids were teenagers and had a handle on things for the most part, especially Jade, my older daughter, who happened to be hyper-responsible at that age. My youngest, Tundra (don’t blame me, I asked my kids if they wanted me to use their real names or fake names in my blog and this is the name she picked. She picked) was only in second grade, but she walked home from school by herself because the school was just on the other side of the block and a group of them walked together.

With my wife on her flight to Dallas, it was important that I prove that I could be a responsible parent and could manage the children, but not so important that I felt I needed to take time off from work and stay home. I mean, the kids have their routine down and everything should be fine until I get home from work, right? Right?

At about 2:30 PM, Jade calls me on my office phone, because at that time, my office was in a basement and the cell signals were terrible, and notifies me that Tundra has not come home from school.

Well, school let out at 2:10, so maybe she is just playing with her friends after school. I asked Jade to run over to the school and look for her and once she is home, call me and let me know. I waited and about 2:45, Jade calls back.

“Dad, no one is at the school. Everyone has gone home and the office staff don’t know where she is.”

Remain calm. Don’t panic. “Okay, see if you can call some of her friends. We have a list of parents’ phone numbers on the fridge. If no one knows anything, call me back. I’ll come home and we’ll take it to the next step.”

Jade agreed and got off the phone. I sat at my desk, thinking about what those next steps would be, calling the local city police, making a missing person’s report, calling organizations to perform searches, checking the Megan’s Law website for my neighborhood. Making a checklist.

Finally, at 3:05, Jade called back and told me that no one knew where Tundra was. That was it. I told Jade I’m coming home and we’re going to find her, no matter what. I gathered my stuff from my desk and started to leave when I heard my desk phone ring. Hoping that it was Jade with good news, I returned and answered.

It was my wife, Mia, letting me know that she had just arrived in Dallas and was headed to the hotel. I don’t really remember what she was telling me, because I wasn’t listening to her. I had a decision to make.

Do I tell her? Or do I not?

If I told her, she would get angry and upset and she was a thousand miles away and had no way to help or do anything. If I didn’t tell her, I had an image of her going to her hotel room, turning on the TV, and seeing CNN announce an Amber Alert for a San Jose girl and see Tundra’s picture on the news. And then I would be a dead man.

So I interrupted her. “Honey, I’m glad you arrived safely, but I have to go. Tundra didn’t come home from school and I have to run home so that we can try to find her.”

“But,” Mia said. “I asked Felecia (my oldest son’s girlfriend at the time) to pick her up from school. Didn’t I tell you?”

I had some phone calls to make.

Again, I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time, sheltering in place with my lovely wife, so I have another story about her to share.

On May 4, 1998, I was at my in-laws’, watching television. Everyone else was outside, but I was violently allergic to some of the plants that they grew by the swimming pool, so I stayed indoors (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). My wife returned from a shopping trip with Jade (again, maybe she’s the common denominator here) and while my daughter ran outside to go swimming, Mia excitedly pulled me away from whatever show I was watching. Probably Maury Povich, he’s my favorite.

“Wes, I just saw a tornado!” I listened patiently while she explained that she had seen the clouds darken and swirl and start to reach for the ground.

Then I told her that the San Francisco Bay Area does not get tornados. We do not have the proper landscape or weather patterns. The buildings and road also compromise the weather systems needed to create a tornado. She tried a couple of times to convince me and I responded with, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mia looked physically hurt. “Well, I thought it was a tornado.”

“I’m sure you saw something, I don’t know what,” I said, “But it wasn’t a tornado.”

Mia nodded and we turned on the news to see what had actually happened. Immediately, there was a reporter in the field talking.

“Well, Bob, it appears that we had a tornado, here in Sunnyvale. It tore the roof off the house behind me.”

Well, how about that. Who doesn’t know what they’re talking about?

Just a note to follow-up on this story. I’ve told it for years and Mia always got mad at me. I finally asked her why she got mad? Mia said that I was making fun of her. Incredulous, I asked her how I was making fun of her?

“I don’t know. Somehow,” she said, frustrated.

I really do love her.

I love my wife. There is no one on this planet I would rather be stuck working at home with, so now that I appear to be sharing space with her during the workweek, I thought I would share some stories about her.

I was working a patrol shift, in the days before cell phones (or at least cell phones that didn’t require a suitcase) when the dispatcher called me and said that my daughter (the older one, Jade, age eleven at the time) was on the phone and that it was an emergency. I got on the phone and Jade told me that her mother, Mia (my wife) had been trimming the lemon tree when it stabbed her in the eye and that she was bleeding. I asked her if the blood was coming from the eyelid or the eyeball.

Jade, “I can’t tell, there’s too much blood.”

Okay. I told her to call 9-1-1 and then let me know what hospital they take Mia to. Jade agreed and I hung up the phone. I sat in dispatch for the next thirty minutes, making inane conversation with the dispatcher, worrying about my wife and her eyeball.

Finally, I began wondering what was taking so long? Fire department response, maybe seven minutes, arrival and assessment, maybe fifteen minutes, then they should be packing her up and transporting. I should know where she’s going by now. I called my house back and Mia answered.

“What the hell are you doing home?” I asked, incredulous.

“What are you talking about? Can you believe Jade called 9-1-1? I had to cancel them.”

My mouth opened and closed but no words came out. “How is your eye?”

“I don’t know, I can’t open it. It hurts too much.”

“Okay, I’m coming home,” I told her and hung up.

I arranged to make sure my shift was covered and went home. It took some convincing, but I told Mia that I was not going to wake up in the morning with a puddle of her eye goo on the pillow, we were going to the emergency room. Several hours later, with a prescription for anti-biotics and a scratched cornea, we were home again. Safe and recovering.

And right now, as I type this, she is watching a horror movie (with both eyes), which she does not normally like to watch. So if you notice any typos or words missing, it’s because she is screaming near me periodically.