Lady in the Rain

At the risk of aging myself, I remember once upon a time we somehow survived without the use of cell phones. Having a cell phone way back when would have certainly saved the day on many an occasion, especially one that ended up creating one of my most significant life’s events.

It was winter rush hour, and I was stuck in peak bumper-to-bumper Los Angeles traffic with my fellow commuters. To make matters worse it was not only dark but raining. In most parts of the country inclement weather is just part of the driving experience, but in Southern California, rain – especially at night, has the same effect on fair-weather drivers as a blizzard does in New England.

Wide-eyed, white-knuckled and completely out of their element, not one single driver either noticed or cared about the middle-aged Hispanic woman standing out there alone in the rain beside her car broken down on the freeway shoulder with the door wide open. Visibly terrified and bawling her eyes out in the dark, she was way too close to the yellow line facing on-coming traffic.

Pulling out of traffic and parking near her car I clicked on my flashlight and shined white light on the wet pavement in front of her to alert other drivers while gingerly approaching her in the torrential downpour. She was completely petrified, drenched to the bone; shaking from both cold and fear and to make matters worse she didn’t speak a lick of English. Throwing my jacket around her shuddering body and using my limited Spanish vocabulary, which consists of about twelve words, she understood that I was there to help and that her stepping back away from incoming traffic was a good idea.

As I approached the open door of her car it was painfully obvious that she had been standing there for a very long time as the interior was completely saturated. Failing every trick in the book trying to get her car started and fumbling through her reluctance to communicate, I somehow managed to decipher that she was married and lived nearby.

Given few available options, she finally agreed to step out of the storm and into my warm dry pickup truck with which I drove her immediately to the address she cryptically provided. Even when we arrived, at what was apparently her home, she was still wide-eyed and freaked out. One knock on the door and it flung wide open. I could feel the blast of radiating warmth and was nearly blinded by the bright light that pierced the surrounding darkness when two little heads popped out the door and yelped “Mama!” As the kids ran toward the two tearful eyes peering out from behind my windshield, the woman’s dumbfounded but incredibly grateful husband, who was also non-English-speaking and wouldn’t stop shaking my hand, sported an ear-to-ear grin that was unmistakably translated in any language – “thank you.”

It was at that moment, standing in front of that open apartment door at night in the pouring rain helping a family avoid what might have otherwise been a horrific catastrophe, that I made a solemn vow to commit my life’s work to empower others to fend for themselves.

A perpetual student of the martial arts, self-defense and weapons training, I became an instructor that I might be able to train others. Later on, when I was working as a part-time deputy for a small county in northern Nevada, it was a stark realization to discover how very little most people knew about keeping themselves and those close to them out of harm’s way.

Being part of a protective team and eventually working world-wide as a paramilitary contractor expanded my observation of this “lack of protective awareness” phenomenon to a global perspective.

This expansion was further amplified after I was recruited and worked in protection as a full-time employee for the CIA. With time and experience I had an epiphany – a paradigm shift in perspective regarding protection.

As a result of this epiphany, I volunteered my services to help build programs designed to assist with the protection of people and property in very nasty (aka “high-threat”) areas overseas. Having successfully completed this venture and observing its beneficial results, I began to codify my discoveries of select protective concepts and measures that really worked and why.

When word spread to the private sector (corporations with businesses overseas) about the success of my protection methods, I was increasingly called upon to assist with similar protective efforts. Working diligently in the middle of one of these projects it hit me like a brick “Hey wait a minute, what about everybody else living back home in the states?” My thoughts drifted back to that lady in the rain by the freeway in California separated from her family all those years ago and to the hardworking folks of northern Nevada and to all my family and friends – their husbands, wives and their kids who would benefit tremendously from such protective measures.

All my buddies back at the CIA thought I’d officially lost my mind when I elected to fulfill my vow and follow my passion to protect others. They said “Dude, you’re going to give up a guaranteed paycheck every two weeks and a federal pension to pursue some crazy-ass idea to harden civilians who don’t even care?” My argument was “Absolutely! Yeah, not everybody cares or even thinks about their protection, but what about those who do? Where can they go? What can they do to make themselves that much less vulnerable and less exposed to bad things that happen to good people?”

You can quit your job but you can’t quit your passion, so I went full circle and began teaching protection classes again, this time not only to military, law enforcement and government agents – but to college students leaving home for the first time, hardworking career professionals battling rush-hour traffic both ways to provide for their family, Moms and Dads concerned about the safety of their family, the extended community, organizations and places of worship. My life’s work, now with cell phone in hand, is geared specifically to those concerned about their protection and that of their families who are earnestly seeking how to alleviate those concerns, which remain to this day, fuel for a fire lit long ago, by a lady in the rain.