by Joelle Steele
I used to walk through the skid row area when I went to the flower market at 3:00 a.m. in downtown Los Angeles. I became accustomed to being panhandled by homeless people during my 18 years in southern California. I was twice mugged at knife-point when I was living in my car. My apartments in Venice Beach were burgled five times. I was living in Los Angeles during the time of the Rodney King Riots and the Northridge Earthquake. I’ve been stalked twice.
We live in a dangerous world, a dangerous planet. I know that even now, in my little neighborhood in semi-rural Washington state, I’m not completely free of danger. I woke up one night to the sounds of someone coming over my back fence, and when I yelled at him he ran across my backyard and over another fence. One afternoon, I went to the grocery store, and when I came home, there was a strange beat-up car idling in my driveway and there was a man trying to take the screen off the window next to my front door. I stopped my car, honked my horn several times in a row, and the man ran away from the front porch and got into the car where another man drove them away.
The important thing is to protect yourself the best that you can without becoming paranoid about it. If you don’t want to be a victim, stop acting like one. Take basic safety measures such as locking your doors. Then go out and live your life. When I leave my house and am gone for an entire day, I always take my external hard drive with me, because if someone manages to break in and take my computer, I won’t lose what’s on it, and I have tens of thousands of files that I can’t recreate.
Another important thing is to grow a backbone. Stop expecting someone else to fix your problems or those of your friends and family and society in general. Step up and do something. I once pulled a mugger off an elderly little Asian woman in West L.A. and on more than one occasion I have mediated disputes between my neighbors and the tenants in the properties I managed in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Los Angeles County.
Don’t just stand there, DO SOMETHING. Stop being such a coward and at least try to make a difference. You don’t have to be a crime stopper, but you can at least let the police know when something is going on in your neighborhood or your place of business/employment that is illegal or dangerous. Volunteer your time to help others in need, even when you are not any better off than they are. You, the individual, are the key to fixing what’s wrong in the world.
