You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
“Hey little girl. Do you want some candy?”
It sounds like a creepy bad joke from a 1960’s tv show.
It sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit where the creeper is living in a van down by the river.
But sometimes the worst joke is real.
Monday I am dealing with upset fathers who believe 2 men tried to lure their little girls, ages 5 and 10 into a gray work van.
Is it a bad joke?
Is it a misunderstanding?
It starts off innocently enough.
The 3 little girls are playing in front of their house.
Suddenly the grey van with no windows approaches.
The van slows and the men, reportedly wearing hoodies, wave.
The van goes up the street, turns around and comes back.
If this was a TV show, this would be the scene where the music gets dark, where the close-ups of the driver’s eyes are seen in the rear view mirror, where the little girls would be playing innocently on the front lawn.
The van pulls up next to the girls and according to the 10-year-old, someone inside the van asks the little girls if they want some candy.
Candy?
Are you kidding me?
A creeper van and candy?
What a cliché.
The girls are scared. They run. They tell their parents. Police are notified.
By the time anyone who can legally vote in this country assesses the situation, the van is gone.
Police put out an all points bulletin for the creeper van.
That’s when I get involved. I interview parents of 2 of the three girls.
The fathers tell me their children were scared. The fathers tell me they were scared too.
Can you imagine the thought of men pulling little girls into a dark van and driving away forever.
It’s the parental version of hell.
The dads want to find the van and the men who would troll the neighborhood, using candy as bait.
I want to catch the creepers as well.
This is one of those stories that is a no brainer.
Get the word out. Get the audience to 1. look for a van. 2. talk to their kids about stranger danger.
I go back to my station and begin writing the story.
Suddenly police call and tell me that they found the men.
You did, I reply
We did, they say.
and..
“it’s not what we thought.”
Those are not good words to a TV journalist with a rapidly approaching deadline.
“It’s not what you thought?”
I put my pen down and prepare for my night to hit a brick wall.
The assistant chief tells me that the two men in the van are members of the same church as one of the little girls. The men say they were on a scavenger hunt in the neighborhood and they are driving a church van that has been recently painted with no decals.
The men recognized the girls, but the girls obviously didn’t recognize the men.
Police ask the men about the candy comment.
The men say they didn’t say anything about candy.
The men apologize to the families and the BOLO is cancelled.
For the police the story is over.
Thanks for playing.
But for me? Tick Tock.
There is a 2 minute expectation of something that needs to fill a show.
What the hell just happened.
It’s like getting punched in the stomach.
I gather the producer and the anchor. I explain the situation. We could scrub the story, but that is a no win for all of us.
We decide to make the story more about the children doing the right thing.
I will end up re-writing the end of this story 3 times.
It makes me wonder how something like this gets so messed up so fast.
I decide it is the times we live in.
Children are taught, and rightfully so, that if someone stops and asks you for candy, you run like hell.
The girls did that and told their dads.
Did they make up the candy comment? All three of them?
The church drivers say they didn’t mention candy.
Where did that come from? Who knows? 2 ten-year olds and a five-year old?
The driver reportedly knew he scared the girls because he apologized to one of the fathers the next day.
My question is; if you knew Sunday you scared children, why didn’t you stop and let the entire neighborhood know that everything was A-OK.
Before he learned that the creepers were actually church members, the father of the five-year old says “it’s very scary. I won’t let my kids go out by themselves again, ever.”
The father of the other girl, age 10, tells me that his daughter did the right thing.
“we’ve always told them if anyone approaches you scream holler run do whatever to stay away. I’m proud of them. they all did the right thing.”
It’s a shame we live in a world where kids have to run and scream and get help.
But since that’s the world we live in, you had better teach your kid to be alert and think like an adult when adults behave badly.
Life’s Crazy™