Today a woman who I see every morning when I come to work had her vehicle stolen off the street in front of her house. She is not a woman per se, she is a name, a face, a smile. Anyway, she had been warming her car up to come to work and ran inside for something. When she returned the place where her car had been was empty.
I’ve walked out of a different exit at a mall into a crowded parking lot and I couldn’t find my car more times than I would like to admit. My stomach dropped, my heart raced, I felt hot and for some weird reason scared and embarrassed. Then I realized I was in the wrong place and I traced my steps back to the right exit and the right parking lot.
It never fails, when I see that car I feel a rush and I laugh aloud. I could not imagine how it would feel if my car was truly gone — in the hands of a stranger.
There was a police report on the theft on the police’s Website this morning. We had a discussion whether placing it on our Internet site this morning would be playing favorites. We do place police reports on our website daily. And if the police are asking for information, those go to the top of the list, because we want to help the community. But, because the victim of the crime was an employee at the newspaper, we had to pause and to be sure it would not be any form of favoritism.
Professional ethics is alive in our building.
We treat a victim as someone we care about, even if that person doesn’t work down the hall.