Have you ever saved someones life

In 1984, in the days when IBM Corporation had its "Product Centers," I worked at one, in downtown Houston, TX. On one afternoon, I took off in the middle of the day, to get an eye check.

I stepped up to my car and was about to haul out my keys, when I heard a woman screaming.

I looked up. And there, about ten feet in front of me, inside a compact car, was a young woman, yelling for all she was worth: "HELP ME! HELP ME!"

And a man inside the car with her, on the passenger side, with both hands locked around her throat.

I dashed up to to that passenger-side door and started to pound on the window. "GET OUT OF THAT CAR! NOW!" I shouted. And when he would not stop what he was doing, I tried the door. I played a hunch that he had forced his way in, and had not taken the time to lock anyone out.

The door swung open in my hands.

*Now* he got out.

We faced each other, eyeball to eyeball, with that car door between us...

...and, so help me, he *whined* at me, "Hey, you, she done me wrong."

I glanced at her, and she started screaming again. (She had stopped when he had let go her throat.)

I faced him again, and said, "Go on!"

He turned tail and ran like a rabbit.

And I suddenly had my arms full of about 110 pounds of warm, quivering woman. "Thank you, God," she said over and over. And then she said, "Please take me somewhere. I can't drive."

Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the assailant dash to the stairwell door and go through it. So I figured that he wouldn't give us *any more trouble.*

So I made sure she locked her door and took her keys. Then I drove her to where my designated driver was waiting for me. (Those were the days when optometrists and ophthalmologists routinely squirted Adrenalin into your eyes when they examined them for refractive error, so I knew that after it was done, I'd need someone else to drive me away from there.)

To make the long story short, I dropped this woman off at the emergency room of Bellaire General Hospital, while I went on to a professional building and had the eye check done. I passed.

My only regret is that the Harris County DA's office never once called me to testify in any criminal matter involving this woman. For that matter, neither did the Houston Police Department call me to come in and look at a line-up. (They tried to tell me about some black suspect who had suffered a chemical scar to his face, but I told them that the assailant had been white, so don't show me any chemically scarred men.) So I assume that the perp got away with it that time.

But at least she survived that particular experience.

At least, on that occasion, murder was *not* done.

Thanks for the kind words.

Actually, I made another calculation: that, had the perp been armed, he'd have been using, or at least brandishing, his weapon. Instead he was using his hands. I also calculated that I could match him in a fight, if it came to that. I did *not* calculate on being able to restrain him, or to argue about it later ("citizen's arrest", etc.). All I cared about was chasing him away, and then taking care of the girl.

The next day, the store manager was speechless. His assistant told me, "What you did was commendable, and I'm sure the lady in the case was grateful, but it was not very smart!" But he wasn't angry with me. He reserved his anger for the parking-garage management who would let a whacked-out so-and-so get in there and threaten someone. The next time, it might be one of the women in the store! You can imagine that he went to the parking-garage office and raised Cain.

Then he came back and summoned all the women in the office to tell them what happened. He gave strict orders that no woman ever go out to that parking garage without an escort.

The other guys in the office, mostly temp guys like me, said, "Wowza!" The store's bookkeeper said, "If it had been me, that guy would be stretched out on the concrete." I smiled and said, "I know you're my supervisor and all that, but you cannot know what you would do in a situation like that, until you're in it."

You can imagine how the ladies took that story. If I didn't already have a steady lady (who, by the way, was my "designated driver" for the eye check), I would likely have found one then.