Protect Our Children

This morning, as I was driving to work, I noticed a small child walking along a narrow bridge over the freeway. It was chilly and beginning to look stormy and he had no shoes on and was walking on asphalt. It was obvious he was out of place and there was no pedestrian sidewalk or place to walk as cars were whizzing by. I saw three people pull over to ask him if he was okay, but he waved them off and kept walking. They drove away. I kept my eye on him while I dialed 911. Then a fourth person stopped. It was a pick up truck with a man inside and he lingered there and then after driving away, turned around and headed back. It was obvious he didn't know the child. He spent about 10 minutes talking to the little boy through his window and then, to my horror, this child walked around and got into the truck. At that point, still waiting for the police to arrive, I had to do something. I made a quick U-turn from where I was parked on the corner and floored it to catch up with the truck and took the license plate. The man in the truck noticed what I was doing and put his car in reverse, almost hitting my vehicle. He walked over to my window. I simply said to him "The police are on the way and we ARE going to wait for them". He stammered..."Oh, I was only going to get him some help". I told him that you should never put a child in your car and leave the area where you found him...the police should come to you.

At this point, he knew that the police had been called. He again backed up his truck and I honked and had to back up to avoid being hit by his vehicle. It seemed a little surreal. I wasn't sure what he was trying to do (intimidate me?). His vehicle almost went into a ditch in his effort to get parallel with my car (so I couldn't see his license plate?). I had visions of him shooting me and taking off with the child. I had also phoned my daughter and by that time she had pulled up and walked over to wait with me for the police. I kept getting the feeling that if this man could leave with the child, he certainly would.

He kept the child inside his truck the whole time, which made me nervous. The window was down, so I began speaking to the child. He told me that his name was Nicholas. He is 9 years old. Nicholas is a bright boy and told me that he was in the GATE (gifted and talented) program at school. I told him that he should never get in a car with someone he doesn't know. At that, the man said "Oh yeah, I told him that too!". That seemed odd, since he put him inside his own vehicle. I told Nicholas that the police were on the way and that they would help him and that he'd be okay. The man looked agitated. I kept talking to Nicholas and, looking at the time on my phone, noticed that about 15 minutes had elapsed since I first called the police. I kept wondering where they were.

Nicholas told me that he had a baby sister and three brothers. He had done something his mother had asked him to do and then, when his brother screamed at him, his mother had hit him a number of times and, to get away from that, he had run out of the front door with no shoes on. He didn't know what to do so he started walking "to a friend's house". School is out for spring break, so he didn't even know if his friend would be home. He had no phone, no jacket, no shoes. He looked scared. I explained that the police would come and take him home and check into whatever the problem was and help fix it. I asked if that would be okay with him. He shook his head yes. He stated that he had been hit for a number of months and was "tired of it".

I was more than a little relieved when two police officers arrived. They talked with Nicholas and determined that they would speak to his family and then possibly CPS. I am not sure what is going to happen with Nicholas. I can only hope that the situation at home will be resolved, either with or without help. I also hope that Nicholas has learned his lesson about getting in the cars of strangers. I worry that he has not, because it ended well. I'm just thankful that, for today, Nicholas is safe. It's a scary world. The man we encountered may have been there just to help, but he was more than a little creepy and my gut tells me that if I wasn't there at that precise moment, Nicholas would have been in the car with someone he didn't know who could have easily been a preditor. One look at the Megan's Law Website and you can see just how many there are. Our world has become a dangerous place for kids. They need to be aware how easy a child abduction can be and how vulnerable they are. We can only try to be vigilant and be there to help and protect our children.