Field of Steve

This subject matter felt more inspiring to me when I was in the middle of it. So much influences how and when we make decisions. My car was locked, the key wouldn’t work and Diana was going to take a while to come get me, so I walked to Barnes & Noble, the opening setting for the story I wrote on change.

On that walk I thought, or better said I felt, this might be a good time to buy Jonah Lehrer’s book How We Decide. I referred to the book in the previously mentioned story, but had read a library copy. One of the first stories in the book is about a guy in the Navy who decides to order missiles fired at what appear as blips on a radar screen. He doesn’t know why he makes that call, and for a while assumes he was wrong to do so. When he finds out his call was correct he assumes he got lucky. A few years later a scientist figures out how it wasn’t luck at all, that information his brain was receiving triggered different chemicals in his body that gave him the sense that something was wrong. Amazing stuff.

There is a down side to that, too. Feelings influence many of our buying decisions, and advertisers know that full well, so that’s why attempts to appeal to our logic are not as powerful as ones that get us emotionally.

All of these thoughts on the walk to the bookstore happened because of other reasons that had me primed to make the decision to buy the book. I had wanted it. I went to Utah. While there I really enjoyed it but had no interest in staying there permanently. I came back and fell in love with this place again, despite the fact that the weather was not perfect today. The situation with Dad is such that we are sure we need to begin preparing for changes so that we can create a sustainable environment in this home. So many things triggered decisions to make changes, but most noticeably a determination to buy a book.

After writing about it I’m still not sure why I felt like I wanted to share that here. It seemed like a good idea while I was walking. Of course the bigger issue tomorrow will be getting that car started.

In honor of Larry King’s upcoming retirement, I join the gaggle of writers who attempt to write a parody column of the one he used to write in USA Today. I seldom read it, because it seemed like a waste of time. I’m sure it wasn’t as big a waste of time as this was, but writing this filled a hole tonight.

Snoop Dog told me that he’s given up pot now that he’s discovered meth … My favorite key on the typewriter is the “caps lock” key … I don’t care what the Catholics say; hemorrhoids are no fun … Does anyone put on a better show than Ringo Starr? … A recent survey said public speaking has been replaced as everyone‘s greatest fear. Americans now are most afraid our next president will be a horse … Bob Hope once told me he had never actually been to Morocco … I just read Glenn Beck’s latest book a fictional piece called “The Overton Window,“ and I can’t believe I’m the one who has to retire … I still love 7-Up, thought it’s been years since I’ve had it straight … Do these glasses make me look younger?… When Kelsey Grammar first got the part as Frasier Crane on “Cheers” it was originally planned that he would compete with Sam Malone for Diane’s attention, but then would eventually be written out of the show. The producers first thought he should get cancer and die, but then thought maybe people wouldn’t get the joke … After all these years I still haven’t figured out why we have toe nails … I went clothes shopping the other day with my wife in a mall in Utah. We bought seven pair on sale, but when I got home I decided to return them, because now that I’m retiring I better be frugal with my money and furthermore I will seldom wear pants … When David Crosby was on the show once and during one of the commercial breaks he threatened to kill me … The Lakers are the best basketball team this year … Michelle Obama was on the show recently and I had trouble concentrating because I kept wondering what she would order at Olive Garden … I’m glad I’ve lived long enough to enjoy Snickers with almonds … The third movie in the “Twilight” series opened to record crowds the other night. I went with my kids to the midnight showing and was awake long enough that when I did fall asleep during the movie I had a nightmare that I would live long enough to see the fourth movie … My kids say iCarly is the best show on television. … I once dated Barbara Hershey but I broke up with her before we got married because I discovered she didn’t have toe nails …

While writing for and reading the newspaper that employs me, it isn’t often that I think about the trees being felled or programmers at work that help me do what I do. There have been times in my life when I have pondered the fact that pictures get slashed into millions of pieces only to reassemble themselves in perfect order on my television. I probably don’t do that enough for the tastes of Albert Einstein, though. Too fast, he thought, do we forget about the groundbreaking work that allows us to sit at home and complain about the programming we devote hours of our life to.

In the Aug. 31, 1930 edition of the New York Times is a piece by Orrin E. Dunlap explaining how Einstein believed people had forgotten about the miracle of technology and invention radio was and were too soon content to focus on the programming.

“Radio listeners should be ashamed to make use of the wonders of science embodied in a radio set while they appreciate them ‘as little as a cow appreciates the botanic marvels in the plants she munches.’ So spoke Professor Albert Einstein in expressing his regrets of public apathy toward scientists, at the opening of the Berlin Radio Exposition.”

The writer quotes Einstein very little in the rest of the piece, preferring to refer to the difference in attitudes from about a decade earlier. Then people were fascinated figuring out how to make their own radios in their homes. When they would tune into some faraway broadcast they would call out to family and neighbors so all could huddle around what it was that was drawing the signal. Anymore a clear broadcast coming out of something that rivaled nice furniture was expected, the author wrote.

Well, it is true that the day of marveling at much if any innovation is pretty well gone. I remember jogging with a Walkman knowing that one day I would probably be able to travel with something much smaller that would play the music better.

Still, we have our moments. I remember joining a friend on an AOL chat room in 1995 purposely trying to make others in the chat room angry. We were trolls before the term was invented. But when I tried it several months later the thrill had already worn off. Watch someone who is new to Facebook take part in all the farms and gang wars and buttons until they inevitably grow tired of them and become fans of clubs that don’t care about those same things. Technology marvels us for a while. Days, not years.

Sometimes never. I didn’t like “Billy Don’t be a Hero” any better just because I could hear it on compact disc.

At some point in my life I came to see criminals as something other than the crimes they committed. Maybe it was the years between college and when I met Diana, where I proved that a man without a plan isn’t to be trusted. Somehow I think it was sooner than that.

In fifth grade there was a boy whose name I can’t remember (And it’s really bugging me that I can’t.) who startled me one day when he suddenly erupted and called the girl next to him something completely random, like “a communist.” The boy told of riding his bike and finding a dead cat by the side of the road. The kid put a firecracker in the cat’s mouth, lit it and watched it explode. “That will teach you not to smoke,” he said he told that former cat. I was horrified, but I laughed like crazy.

Another kid whose name I do remember was a constant source of trouble, but was genuinely nice. Because of his inability to catch on to schoolwork and his penchant for displaying attitude, he was doomed to continuation school by the time we reached high school. There was something amiss in his family, though I never got close enough to figure out what it was. Years later I saw him yelling at a girl I knew from church, a girl who had fallen away because she never really found a friend there. She was his boyfriend. He got her pregnant. I wasn’t surprised.

These two boys I remember, even if not by name, have yet to show up on Facebook, so I’m left to wonder what became of them. So much can give a kid a tough start to begin with that it’s no wonder years later when you read in the newspaper that they’ve been busted for meth, got arrested for doing something that to most of us seems incredibly stupid, or maybe died an accidental death. Or maybe they found a way to make life work.

I have my doubts. I heard Michael Hanlon, who wrote the book “Ten Questions Science Can’t Answer (Yet!): A Guide to Science’s Greatest Mysteries.” He told the host society doesn’t really deal well with people who aren’t very smart. We accept that we can’t all be elite athletes. Most of us just aren’t built for it. Yet we expect everyone to go to college. These boys I knew didn’t cope well early on, and didn’t get a lot of help.

Then there is my nephew, who is in prison, again, for reasons none of us seem to know. That boy wasn’t wired like the rest of us. You see those movies where some country type says, “That boy just ain’t right.” That’s my nephew. It could be alcohol his birth mother drank while pregnant with him, or so we’ve heard. Whatever it was, he wasn’t wired the same as you and I. So it’s hard for me to be too certain that he is, shall we say, a dirtbag. No matter what those two boys from school ended up doing, they aren’t either.

In Rick Bragg’s book “The Prince of Frogtown,” he comes to accept that there was more to his father than all the bad things he saw.

“But over a lifetime I have known a lot of men in prisons, men who will spend their eternity paying for their worst moment on earth. It came when they caught their wife cheating on them and thumbed back the hammer on a gun they bought to shoot rats and snakes, or got cross-eyed drunk in some fish camp bar and pulled a dime-store knife, just because they imagined a funny look or a suspicious smile. You do not have to forgive such men, ever, that minute. You can lock them away for it, put them to death for it, and spend your eternity cursing their name. It is not all they are.”

This doesn’t mean people shouldn’t pay for their crimes. It wouldn’t hurt, though, to consider that we aren’t the sum of all the bad things we’ve done.

I am a blessed man.

Just this evening I was recounting to my daughter that in all my years, and I’ve had more than it might appear, I’ve not once been bitten by a lion, or a tiger.

That may seem astounding to you, but I assure you it’s true.

There are innumerable ways I have been blessed, experiences I’ve not had that I hope I never do. It’s that I’m not a risk-taker, but good fortune has prevented me from experiencing some of the maladies that strike so many. If there are odds in this world, apparently I’m good at defying them.

Not once have I had rabies. Surgery for swallowed glass? Not I. Lemonade laced with deadly poison has never passed my lips. All those plane crashes we hear about have all happened when I wasn’t flying.

I’ve had the kind of luck few people have.

Never have I had the experience of being somewhere in public, like church or a Major League Baseball game, and suddenly realized that I wasn’t wearing any clothes. Believe me, I’ve checked. Countless times I’ve reached down and tugged on my pants just to make sure I remembered to put them on. I’ve never had the awkward experience of wondering how to handle the situation once you realize you’re not wearing anything. I mean, do you just sit there and pretend it’s normal and wait for everyone to leave before you exit? Or do you make a quick getaway, hoping few people will understand why? Is it possible in that situation that no one would notice? Would they look at me and think, “Hmmn, there’s something different about Steve today, but I can’t quite put my finger on it?”

Fortunately for me, it’s not something I’ve had to go through.

I just pray my extraordinary good fortune will continue.

The Kim and Steve saga, of which there were several chapters on this blog, appears to have ended thanks to Kim’s inability to stay away from someone from whom she was legally required to maintain a distance. It wasn’t Steve. I can’t remember who it was. I think it was a woman.

After several reports of the two of them, or one of them, heard on the police scanner and making brief appearances in the police blotter, the pair has drifted away. Steve’s whereabouts are unknown to me, though it seems the lack of Kim has made it easier to not draw attention from the cops. I haven’t heard a thing about him in weeks.

Kim, on the other hand, will be making her home in jail for the next several months, after the third violation of a no-contact order. The other person had the same order, so both might be jailed.

Of course this could be a good thing for both Steve and Kim. Steve gets to get on with his life without her and she has a year to stay sober. I’m not sure either of those results will play out just like that, but we can all hope.

As for me I rarely visit the Sev anymore, but I still check the reports to see if Steve will make a new appearance. How much do I hope to never see either name in a police report again? More than life itself.

Steve and Kim were visited by police again today. Details when I get them.

Steve and Kim, of the Steve and Kim fame, found their way into the police reports again. Thanks to a cohort for giving me the story. There were no arrests.

Someone called about a couple fighting near a convenience store (not the Sev). When Kim talked to police she was apparently drunk. Go figure. They couldn’t get much out of her, other than Steve didn’t hit her. They were arguing over a bag.

Earlier, according to Steve, they had been inside a nearby restaurant enjoying a sundae in a “honeymoon” style, feeding each other. The officer reported Steve still had fudge on his face.

Apparently there was beer in the bag.

After a night meeting in Bremerton a couple weeks ago I took to talking to a woman I’d witnessed earlier on. She was hard to miss. She was in one of those scooter electronic chairs to help her get around. She looked to be in her 70s, was severely overweight and had oxygen fed into her nostrils.

At the meeting the audience was divided into separate groups in which the people would haggle over parking and greenery, with an easel of paper serving as the focal point. This woman stayed on the periphery, not offering up any ideas of her own. Once in a while someone would stand directly in front of her. After a few minutes something would spark a reminder that the woman was interested, even if she wasn’t involved. The ones who had been blocking her view would beg her pardon and get out of the way, occasionally asking if she had input she’d like to offer. She didn’t.

As she waited for the bus to come to take her home, she told me of her life.

She lived in the neighborhood under discussion and was content to learn what everyone was planning and to make sure it wouldn’t affect her too much. Edna, the woman, was filling a role her husband once played. Floyd and Edna had been married 60 years when he died in early 2008. They had a daughter and volunteered for several organizations over the years, including the Washington Association of Retarded Children. When it came to city government stuff, Floyd was the more interested of the two.

With Floyd gone Edna was left to her own devices to get to the bottom of the planning process going on in her neighborhood. She contacted the local transit agency to arrange for rides on the buses specifically designed for the handicapped and made a day of it. She fit in a doctor’s visit to Silverdale and had dinner plans on the agenda until it became clear she couldn’t do the dinner and the meeting.

The oxygen was for the Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. She has diabetes. Edna has had two hip replacements and has four broken screws in the same place. With the weight, the COPD and diabetes, there’s too much going on for doctors to risk operating on her anymore.

Edna lives in the same house she and Floyd moved into about a half century ago. The scooter is too big for many of the doorways, so she uses crutches mostly at home. She wants to find an assisted-living center to move to, somewhere close to her daughter, but can’t afford the rent and doesn’t qualify for assistance.

So she gets out a couple times a week fro trips to the doctor, to Family Pancake House, The Dollar Store and Grocery Outlet. And she hopes for karma, that all the years she and Floyd volunteered and served in ways to make life better for other peoples’ children, especially the “retarded” ones, will come back to her now in ways that will make her final years more enjoyable.

This is the last of 17 chapters to tell a story that ended just fine. If you’ve come to this chapter first, I encourage you to scroll down to chapter one and work your way up.

Today we’re agog about retention bonuses for employees at AIG. Many of them were for more than a million and were used to entice them to stay until their part of the business closed shop.

I was first introduced to the concept of retention bonuses about a decade ago when Geneva Steel was giving them to executives to keep them on board as the company worked through its bankruptcy reorganization. Rank and file employees were ticked, as angry as people are now about AIG.

In today’s conversation is a discussion of whether AIG can influence its bonus recipients to be good, by giving at least some of the money back.

It has caused me to wonder whether I would choose to be good if I were in their shoes. They have no obligation to give anything back and retention bonuses are a commonly used device to keep people with certain skills when they could find it easier to work in a ship that has promise of sailing for a while.

For those of you who think it would be an easy choice, and I’d like to think you’re correct, I saw something last night that made me wonder.

ABC has a show called What Would You Do? They set up these phony scenarios and see how people react. In one case they set up an informercial for a product that was supposed to help grow hair back. There advertised for people willing to participate, offering a specific payment.

There were a series of tests these people went through. First they saw a woman put some of the stuff in her hair. First it burns, then her hair comes out. Almost everyone stayed. Then the people were all willing to say they used the product, reading from a script. They were told to talk about the 100 percent money-back guarantee, which they were told might not happen, but it was going to be advertised that way anyway. Then they were told one in three get cancer from the stuff and they continued to sing the product’s praises.

Some did leave at various stages. The rest, however, had their excuses as to why they stayed. One guy said the company has insurance and it’s on them to guarantee his claims. Another woman said she wanted to be an actress and saw it as a way to further that wish.

The payment was $75, which illustrates that the amount of money probably doesn’t matter. Perhaps that $75 meant more than the seven figures those other executives are getting. It doesn’t take a million to convince someone to forget about being good.

My wife will sometimes tell me I’m a good guy, and it means a lot to me. I’m not always great. I don’t do all the service I could, sometimes I’m short with the kids and there are time at work where I feel like I’m terrible. I’m kind of going through that right now.

Steve asked for a ride and I gave him one. When the night was over I imagined that Steve and Kim were headed for disaster, that Kim was unstable and Steve was a man with few options. He’s also a scrapper. And in some instances he’s able to show he cares for someone other than himself. He knew he probably wouldn’t be welcome, but Kim would be. When he was asked to leave and he stayed anyway, I believe he probably figured a night in jail would be more comfortable than a night outside. It was bitter cold back then.

What I’ve learned about them since is that both have substance abuse problems, that he’s probably an abuser and that she seldom operates coherently. They’re liars for sure, and they might be capable of lying to get revenge.

This was the couple I had in my car.

In my way of thinking it was a good thing to do. Foolish, perhaps, but in the end I go back to the sense I felt before deciding to take them. Despite that, I’d probably tell them “no” next time.

My fears that night were, based on history, justified. The man behind me had shown a willingness to be violent, though I didn’t know that at the time.

It’s hard to say now, about two months later. It was awfully cold that night.

What I’ve come to believe since is that being good is important, but perhaps it would be better to be a little more aggressively good, rather than waiting for opportunities to be good.

A woman I spoke with the other night talked about the volunteer work she did with mentally challenged kids back when everyone called them “retarded.” She spoke of some of the other work she did. That was goodness.

A guy I used to work with became a kind of surrogate father for a boy whose father abandoned him and his mother. The guy was never going to marry the boy’s mother, but he cared about both of them to be a Boy Scout leader and do other things for the benefit of the boy. That, my friends, is goodness.

That’s the kind of good I want to be.

This is the 16th of 17 chapters to tell a story that ended just fine. If you’ve come to this chapter first, I encourage you to scroll down to chapter one and work your way up.

A few days ago I decided the next chapter in this series would be the last one, because I lost confidence I was ever really going to see the police reports I requested. That would have been fine for everyone, I’m sure, if anyone is still paying attention. The problem with that decision, though, was nights would pass and I still didn’t write the final piece.

Today I got the call that the records were ready. So this is the second-to-last in our story. The next one will put to conclusion what value I think there was in the experience. Maybe I learned something. You’ll have to wait at least one more day to find out.

The police records I received begin in August of last year and go all the way up to the night before I gave Steve and Kim a ride. The request was related only to Steve, but Kim appears in most of these.

Friday, August 15, 2008, 9:40 a.m.

An officer notices a pickup truck being driven by someone who knew before had a suspended license. Coincidentally, this happens close to the 7-Eleven where I picked Steve and Kim up. Steve was the passenger. The driver was handcuffed because a police check confirmed his license was still suspended.

The officer asked for Steve’s identification and then did a check on him and found that Steve had two outstanding warrants, one of which was for assault–domestic violence.

The driver was released. Steve was arrested and jailed.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008, 1:48 a.m.

Kim called police saying she was punched in the head by a man she didn’t know. When police arrived at the house (By the way, every other incident happens at this same house. It’s not close to the 7-Eleven or to the place they were going to have me drop them off, but it’s a couple blocks away from house that one year for Christmas had on display Santa on a crucifix.) she was holding an ice bag to the side of her head. The officers wrote that she wasn’t crying and appeared intoxicated. In the living room was a coffee table there were beer cans and other alcoholic drinks.

An officer asked Kim what happened. The most she said was, “The guy who hit me is downstairs. He pulled my hair and hit me in the head.” But she didn’t know his name and only described him as white. She didn’t say any more about the alleged assault. The officer asked her to pull away the ice bag and he saw no bruises, cuts or swelling. He did see some redness on the right side of her face.

Two others in the room said they didn’t see anything. The officer went downstairs and found Steve lying in bed. He also seemed intoxicated. They went upstairs and Kim said, “That’s him.”

Outside, Lomax said, “I didn’t touch her.”

Kim got in an ambulance and went to the hospital. Steve’s case was sent to the prosecutor’s office.

Saturday, October 11, 2008, 6:22 a.m.

A woman called police saying she was being hit with a stick by a man. She said she was there to pick up her sister. The two women were outside the home when police arrived. The one woman said her sister called at 5:20 a.m. for a ride. When she got there, she said, she heard her sister arguing with a man in the house and then saw him say, “You are not leaving,” and swung a cane or a stick at her.

The officer was suspicious of the story that she was coming at 5:20 in the morning to pick up her sister. The two women stuck to their stories. The men inside, however, said the women arrived together and that they were trying to get money from the man. When he didn’t give any money, the men said, the women began taking some of the man’s stuff, including a check book.

The women said they didn’t have any of the man’s belongings and a search showed that to be true.

Steve was in the house at the time and told the officers that the other man had invited the women over for “company,” code for prostitution. The women had been there 10 minutes and then asked the man for money. He said he had none, so the women began taking things from the house.

There were text messages from the man’s phone to one of the women that could have provided code for what was going to happen, but she said the battery fell out and all the text messages were erased. When the officer said those messages get erased with a “delete all” function, not with a battery falling out, the woman denied erasing them.

The woman said she had been dropped off at the house by her sister and said she had been a prostitute for about two years, forced into it by a former boyfriend. She said she hadn’t been doing that for about a year, but had had sex for money with the man within the previous two months. There was no question, the officer wrote, that sex would happen and money would change hands as a result.

One woman was arrested and taken to jail for prostitution and lying to a cop.

The man said he never paid for sex, that he only gave her money as a loan out of the kindness of his heart.

Steve said he was smitten with the other woman, but denied trying to get her to have sex for money. He wrote the text message about an hour before the women arrived, though, which contained a phrase akin to “I have bills and you have pockets.” Steve said he only wrote that hoping to get the woman to come over.

The officer referred the case on the men to the prosecutor’s office.

Sunday, November 9, 2008, 9:28 p.m.

Police received a call of a woman at a gas station who had been assaulted. She was bleeding from her head and entered the station asking for help.

The woman was Kim. She was bleeding from the side of her head and the back of her left ear. She said she was at a house watching a movie when a woman she didn’t know came in and started yelling at her and punching her. Kim was, according to the officer, “extremely intoxicated and hysterical,” and it was tough to get a clear story from her. She said she didn’t know why the woman started punching her. Kim went to the hospital by ambulance.

The officers went to the house and Steve was there with three men and one woman. Steve and the others were uncooperative and vague, the officer wrote, but then reluctantly said that Kim had been lounging around naked on the couch all day and was told several times to put her clothes on. She ignored that request.

Kim began arguing with another woman they all had just met that night. They all said they weren’t in the room when the fight started, which the officers didn’t believe.

The case was sent to the detectives.

Thursday, January 1, 2009, 8 a.m.

Police received a call at a house there might be someone there unwanted. Steve was outside. He said he left to go get more beer and when he returned his belongings were put on the front porch and door was locked. He knocked several times, but no one let him in. The officer wrote that Steve appeared intoxicated.

The officer talked to another resident, who said Steve was drunk and he wanted him out of the house. Steve had been living there for a few months, to help the man recover from a leg injury. But Steve had stopped paying rent and he wanted him out.

The officer explained that the man would have to go through a civil eviction process. Steve was let back in.

Thursday, January 1, 2009, 9:06 p.m.

Police were called for a domestic “altercation.”

Steve was there, smelling of intoxicants, saying he’d had about three beers. He said Kim was also drinking heavily. He said he and Kim had been dating two months and that sometimes she stays at the house.

The officer asked why Kim had called police. Steve said she was drunk, crazy and wanted him out so she could have sex with his roommate. He said he and she had argued earlier because he found out she was cheating on him. He said he went to a living room couch to be alone, that she came in and hit him in the face and that he defended himself by pushing her away. She then sat down on the coffee table, he said.

Kim, meanwhile, said Steve had thrown her down onto the coffee table. Another one there said he saw nothing, but another said Steve and Kim had been fighting all day. The altercation was mutual, he said, but at one point Steve attempted to choke Kim on the couch.

An officer told Steve he thought his story was implausible, that it was unlikely Kim had sat down on the coffee table. Steve said the fight was never physical. When the officer reminded Steve that he had said he pushed her away, he still denied the fight was ever physical.

Because the witness appeared to corroborate Kim’s story more than Steve’s, Steve was arrested and jailed for domestic violence assault.

A night later, returning from another beer run, Steve was locked out of the house again. This time the officers could not get anyone inside to answer the door.

Friday, January 16, 2009, 1:05 p.m.

Steve and Kim called police about a fight. Steve said earlier he was assaulted by another woman. He said the woman repeatedly punched him in the eye and kicked out his teeth. When asked why, Steve said he had no idea why and was just sitting on the couch when she attacked.

Kim said the woman hit her in the forehead, causing her to black out for several minutes. The officer saw a bruise on Kim’s forehead. Kim said she had never met the woman before entering the house the night before. She said the attack was completely random.

Police found the woman and in doing a search found in the bra line a credit card and in her front pocket was a toothbrush container that had a glass tube. The woman said it was a crack pipe. More searching resulted in credit card applications for one of the other men inside the house.

The woman said Kim and Steve arrived at the house the night before and Kim appeared to have a swollen right eye when she got there. Steve was drunk, had come to the house to do more drinking, and the woman believed the two had been fighting. The woman went downstairs and said she heard Steve and Kim arguing upstairs.

In the morning, the woman said, she went upstairs and saw Kim asleep on the floor. She tried to wake her and saw the lump on her forehead. The woman told Steve to leave, but Kim got mad at her for it. She told Steve she wanted him gone when she returned to the house. When she came back Steve and Kim had both left.

The officer said the woman showed no signs of having been in a fight. She was arrested for theft and for possession of drug paraphernalia.

Steve and Kim said one of the men in the house “just sat there and watched” as they were being assaulted. The other people in the house, though, all said they didn’t see the woman assault anyone, that Kim had arrived at the house with the bump on her head. One said Steve and Kim had a violent relationship and that he knew Steve regularly assaulted Kim. He also said Kim told him she was afraid of Steve.

One witness said he didn’t think it would have been possible for him to have missed the fight had it happened the way Steve and Kim explained, and that the woman was not capable of inflicting that kind of damage if it had. Another witness said she knew the fight didn’t happen.

One officer wrote that Steve said the woman had kicked out his teeth, but the officer knew from previous encounters that Steve was missing teeth.

The officers determined that Steve and Kim made up the story because they were mad that the woman said they needed to leave the house.

The woman, by the way, was the ex-wife of the property owner.

Thursday, January 29, 2009, 10:35 a.m.

Police were called to a house for a possible burglary. The caller said Steve and a woman were inside the house. The caller was the property owner. He said everyone had been evicted the week before. Steve had lived there and the female stayed there from time to time.

The property owner said he entered the house that morning and smelled smoke. He walked into the living room and saw Steve and the woman. They stood up, gathered their things and left. The man found a boarded up window that had the plywood sheeting torn off.

Another officer found Steve and Kim walking blocks away. The property owner was taken there and identified the two as the ones who had been in his house.

Kim said she wouldn’t answer any questions. Steve waived his rights. He said they went in through that basement window, that both of them had torn off the plywood.

The officer mentioned the eviction and that Steve had to know he wasn’t supposed to be in there. “I know, but we did not want to freeze to death,” Steve answered. Both Steve and Kim were jailed for trespassing and malicious mischief.

Steve told me he and Kim spent that night at a county shelter that was opened temporarily because of the extremely cold temperatures.

The next night they got a ride to Poulsbo.

This is the 15th of I-don’t-know-how-many, probably 17, chapters to tell a story that ended just fine. I think it did. I guess technically it’s not over, because there is still a set of police records I’m planning to read. If you’ve come to this chapter first, I encourage you to scroll down to chapter one and work your way up.

My records request continues to be delayed. I found out today that getting eight different police records takes some time. There might be names to black out in those reports.

In other news, Steve and Kim found their way back into the police reports today. According to a colleague, Kim was being visited and arrested on a theft. The couple was found in a house that in the past has been known as a drug house. The police report indicated that they were squatting in the house, meaning they were living there without permission. They had been staying there, apparently, when the landlord kicked the one legitimate tenant out, then boarded out the windows. Steve, the report indicated, had punched out one of the windows and he and Kim lived there a while.

Steve himself was angry at Kim, because before she was hauled off to jail she managed to take Steve’s prize pool cue and pawn it.

This is the 14th of I-don’t-know-how-many, probably 16, chapters to tell a story that ended just fine. I think it did. I guess technically it’s not over, because there is still a set of police records I’m planning to read. If you’ve come to this chapter first, I encourage you to scroll down to chapter one and work your way up.

When I made the records request on Monday, I expected to be able to read them right then. When I was told I wouldn’t get them that day, I assumed I’d get them Tuesday. Not so. I don’t know when I’ll get to read the final piece I want to see before closing the book on this story.

What did happen today, though, is Kim showed up in the police records. She called police complaining of a shattered knee, not saying how it happened. When police arrived she had decided she was fine. The guy that was with her, not Steve, said he’d only talk through a lawyer.

This is the 13th of I-don’t-know-how-many, probably 15, chapters to tell a story that ended just fine. I think it did. I guess technically it’s not over, because there is still a set of police records I’m planning to read. If you’ve come to this chapter first, I encourage you to scroll down to chapter one and work your way up.

In Chapter Four I wrote, “He was taking special care a lot that evening to make sure she knew he loved her. To me that seemed like the behavior of someone who felt guilty for abuse.”

Less than two weeks before I gave Steve and Kim a ride they had called police, reporting that a woman in their Bremerton home had beaten them up. Kim said the woman knocked Steve’s teeth out and left her with the bruise that still lingered the night I had them in my car. But the record I was reading was the night after the fight. Kim and Steve said the woman was only arrested on theft charges.

That was true. They arrested the woman because they found someone else’s debit or credit cards on her. One was hidden in her bra. The woman said she had permission. The owner of the card said otherwise.

Nonetheless, no one thought the woman had beaten up Steve and Kim. Even the guy whose cards were stolen said he thought Steve and Kim were saying that because the woman had said they could no longer stay in the house. They suspected Steve of doing it, saying the couple had fought loudly in the past.

Today I also made a request for eight different police records going back to midway last year. While at the police station I also turned in the planner. An officer came out to talk to me. I told him I wanted to turn it in and that I didn’t want to open it in case there was something illegal in there. The planner, though, looked somewhat like to one I used to use. He opened it and pretty quickly I knew it wasn’t mine.

The officer opened up the planner, saw the name at the top of one of the pages, repeated the woman’s name and uttered an expletive. The officers know this woman well. There were pills inside and a photo of the woman with what looked like could be her son.

I expect that once I read the final records, that will be the end of this tale, save for one chapter that will be an epilogue. But there’s still those other records.

This is the 12th of I-don’t-know-how-many chapters to tell a story that ended just fine. I think it did. I guess technically it’s not over as long as there’s a planner in my possession. If you’ve come to this chapter first, I encourage you to scroll down to chapter one and work your way up.

Nothing new today, really. I did look at the Washington court records to see how often this pair showed up in courts. Steve has 15 records and I’m pretty sure they’re all his, because his last name is pretty unique. For Kim there are 128, but her name is probably held by dozens in the state today. My name is in there 146 times, but only one is for me. Oh wait, I mean two. I got a ticket in 2004 on Bainbridge Island and another one in 2006 in Benton County. Those are both on the list.

I also looked up the name of the woman they said beat them up. It makes me want to spend some time with the Superior Court records again next week to see if the incident they told me about shows up, the one where she beats the both of them up. I still don’t understand how someone could do that much damage and only gets busted for theft.

At work I started talking about the names associated with this story. The term “frequent flyer” came out. It means at least one of them is often in the police records we read.

When you pick someone up off a curb in front of a 7-Eleven you really don’t have any reason to expect that this is someone who lives a near perfect life and just happened to have bad luck one night. So there should be no surprise there is a history here. It’s just that when they are in the car with you, you don’t know details. Even if I had an iPhone or Blackberry I wouldn’t have been able to find out that night any of this couple’s history. So I relied on what I always have, the idea that if something was going to wrong I’d know it before I agreed to take the anywhere. I’d know it. No logic involved, I would just know it.

As for Kim’s reason for leaving in an ambulance that night, I probably won’t ever know why. Criminal records are easy to find. Health records are not. My assumption is that whatever was making her dizzy when she was with me was still going on later. The drugs, the rest of which are likely still in the planner I have, probably helped for a while. But she probably got the beer she wanted, and might have been due for another pill. At any rate she got the help she needed. And Steve slept somewhere warm.

This is the 11th of I-don’t-know-how-many chapters to tell a story that ended just fine. I think it did. I guess technically it’s not over as long as there’s a planner in my possession. If you’ve come to this chapter first, I encourage you to scroll down to chapter one and work your way up.

Today I received the police report that explained why Steve was taken to jail. One of the first things I noticed was the time element, because it seemed to be a lot earlier than I had expected.

Kitsap County Sheriffs deputies went out there about 8:30 p.m. The jail record, which is no longer online, showed something much later in the night. I wanted to determine how long after I dropped them off this thing happened, if he had been asked to leave as soon as he got there or whether he was allowed to wear out his welcome.

I checked my cell phone records, because my calls to the pizza joint and my brother-in-law were directly before and after my ride with Steve and Kim. Based on my bill, they got in the car around 6 p.m. and got out about 45 minutes later. So he had some time before he was asked to vacate. Had he left willingly, I might never been curious enough to learn more about his criminal history.

What happened that night was pretty minor when you put it up against some of the reports we read on a regular basis. It never would have made the paper.

Deputies arrived and found the guy who called. One went to talk to Steve in the living room while the other went to speak with Kim in the back bedroom. Steve acknowledged he didn’t live there and had been asked to leave.

Kim wanted attention because she said she was injured. The deputy reported she was “very intoxicated.” I guess that means she got the beer she’d been seeking earlier.

The deputy made reference to the bruise around her right eye, which Kim again said was from an earlier fight with a woman. The officer asked about the cut she reported having and she lifted up her arm, revealing a “small scabbed abrasion” about an inch long. I’m not a doctor, as you’re probably aware. I don’t how quickly abrasions become scabbed.

A witness there, a 22-year-old woman, said Kim had been saying she was dizzy.

Kim then said earlier in the evening she and Steve were in “an altercation.” Steve, according to Kim, “became radical.” He was, in her words, “acting like an (uncomplimentary adjective and noun that begins with ‘a’).” She said she was slapped a couple times on her face’s left side, that Steve had added to her bruising.

The deputy, though, didn’t see any signs of new injury. Kim said the other woman had witnessed it. But the woman denied seeing any kind of fight, verbal or physical. The guy who called to have Steve escorted out denied seeing any fight either.

Steve again said he didn’t live there and he’d been asked to leave, but said, “I didn’t have a place to go.” He also denied any dispute had happened. Steve was jailed on suspicion of trespassing.

Kim left in an ambulance.

This is the 10th of I-don’t-know-how-many chapters to tell a story that ended just fine. I think it did. I guess technically it’s not over as long as there’s a planner in my possession. If you’ve come to this chapter first, I encourage you to scroll down to chapter one and work your way up.

For a while today I allowed myself to get excited, believing that I was going to get to the bottom of what happened the night I left the couple at the mobile home. I was going to have the record e-mailed to me. The sender hit “send.” Somehow, it never got to me. He tried it again, then sent it to someone else I asked him to.

Somewhere in the e-mail etherworld is information I’ve been curious about for nearly a month. The surprise and curiosity I experienced the night I saw my passenger’s name on the jail roster was about to be answered.

What’s more, I found out there have been several incidents since late last summer.

A co-worker asked me today if I had second thoughts about taking this couple where they wanted to go. I don’t know what happened that night, but I don’t know if knowing will matter. Fact is I am having second thoughts.

This is the ninth of I-don’t-know-how-many chapters to tell a story that ended just fine. I think it did. I guess technically it’s not over as long as there’s a planner in my possession. If you’ve come to this chapter first, I encourage you to scroll down to chapter one and work your way up.

This probably shouldn’t qualify as a chapter, because it will be little more than an update. It’s strange writing this now that the story has caught up with my life.

The past two days have been pretty busy, so it hasn’t worked for me to go to Poulsbo to read the court records.

However, I received a return phone call from a law enforcement officer. He left a message on my work voicemail and said he’d be willing to help me locate the reports on the guy. I was really only looking for one report. I wasn’t in the office when he called and returned to work too late to call him back. So I’ll contact him tomorrow.

As it turns out, it appears local law enforcement has become quite familiar with my passenger this past year.

I’ll post more when I know it.

This is the Eighth of I-don’t-know-how-many chapters to tell a story that ended just fine. I think it did. I guess technically it’s not over as long as there’s a planner in my possession. If you’ve come to this chapter first, I encourage you to scroll down to chapter one and work your way up.

We’ve come to a point where the story ends soon, but not tonight. I still don’t know what happened after I left that night. I called a deputy to get some of the information and the court I went to didn’t have the stuff from the time I was with them or shortly thereafter.

What I was able to see was court records from an incident five years ago, records revealing that on one hand I had nothing to fear and on the other hand enough to be concerned about.

There are other records I plan to see that go into the past, but this is what I learned today. Five years ago Steve was a heartbroken father and as a result made extremely frightening threats.

As part of that case, there is information that goes even farther into the past. He was married briefly when he was young, then divorced. He married again, became a father, then divorced again. During a competency evaluation he revealed he had been in the Army and was training to fly helicopters, but was discharged after having an affair with a senior officer’s wife.

He gained custody of his daughter, but she ran away after four years. She stayed away, with another family raising her from about 15 on.

Her departure left Steve feeling alienated from his own immediate family. At least he believed that they had all taken his daughter’s side.

She was planning to be married and didn’t invite him. He was hurt. He spoke to his brothers and made threats, principally to “level” the church where his daughter was to be married and to kill those attending the ceremony.

In an e-mail he wrote to his brother that “I will be leaving for church soon to raise such a scene that the likes of which have not probably ever been experienced.” In that case, however, he was not writing about the wedding. He was planning to arrive at the church and make a ruckus, asking the congregation how they got past the 10 Commandments, then escort the pastor to his office to essentially tell him how the church wasn’t being run well. He was also going to inform the congregation that those attending the wedding would be party to a libel suit.

About the wedding party he wrote, “If the entire family want to be part of this beautiful occasion, it will certainly be their choice. My 9mm is under my arm, un-loaded, un-chambered with 25 124 grain terminal penetration hollowpoint in packed magazines.”

Oh dear.

Then he tried to express how he’d like his daughter to experience the same pain he has felt since she ran away and continued to stay away from him. “Now it’s just up to me to figure out if I want to survive this or not. But if (son-in-law)’s head were severed from his body with 1 300 grain 44 mag hollow point, I would guess that (daughter) would then understand the pain of watching someone you love yanked away from you , and get to live with it.”

Police came to arrest him and he didn’t resist. He told police he was venting with his brother and that in hindsight he should not have said what he did. In jail, though, he reportedly called one brother and said he was going to “get” the one who called police.

The wedding came and went while he was in jail.

He was sentenced to two years in and a $5,000 fine, but almost all of it was suspended. The no-contact order against him was dismissed after his father wrote the court saying Steve’s e-mail was a “cry for help.”

The e-mail and the reported phone calls demonstrated that Steve had a penchant for drama. The military record made me doubt one thing he told me over and over about having served in the first Iraq conflict and what he did. The timing doesn’t seem right. I have no proof that he’s lying, but it does point to someone not unwilling to employ dramatic skills.

“You know I love you, Kim, more than life itself.”
“You’re the pilot.”
“I brought this stuff so we could get a motel for just (pause) one (pause) night.”
“One thousand, seven hundred dollars, just so we could get a motel for just (pause) one (pause) night.”
“Both Biblical”

Despite all that information about his threats, I don’t have any evidence that Steve was ever violent for real. He was an overwrought father given to melodrama to strengthen his case for what he needed. In the competency hearing the evaluator said he had no record of being violent, but the fact that he probably knew how to use the weapons he mentioned was only troubling to this particular case.

There are other court records. I do plan to find whatever is relevant in them. I’m still wanting to figure out how big a chance I took that night.

This is the seventh of I-don’t-know-how-many chapters to tell a story that ended just fine. I think it did. I guess technically it’s not over as long as there’s a planner in my possession. If you’ve come to this chapter first, I encourage you to scroll down to chapter one and work your way up.

Even with the news that Steve had been arrested, I could have decided to put the night’s events out of my mind and regard it as an interesting anecdote to tell in the days ahead.

Diana wasn’t happy with my decision to give that couple a lift and recommended I not do that again. Beyond that issue, though, was the notion that maybe I should have called the police earlier once I got home, to tell them they might want to keep an eye out on the neighborhood.

The county jail records showed Steve had been arrested around 11:30 p.m. The charge was criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor. It meant he’d probably spend the weekend in jail, which if nothing else was warm.

What I didn’t know is if police might be looking for anything other information about the couple, about how they got there that night. I decided to call to give them any information they might want. After 2 a.m. an officer called, one who really didn’t know anything about the case, and told me not to worry about it.

That’s all fine, except when I went to the car I discovered the couple had left something behind. When they went to 7-Eleven that night they had purchased themselves some dinner. She had a salad and a sandwich. He had an Oscar Meyer Lunchables “Cracker Stacker” edition. That had been left in the car.

So had the planner, the one that contained her medicine.

I’ve decided I don’t want to open it. I want to take it to the police and explain to them the situation and let them deal with it. But I haven’t taken the time to do it yet.

I also find myself wondering what happened to the couple that night after I dropped them off. There are public documents that can tell me. Well, those documents will at least tell me what people say happened that night. My plan is to make a request to see the police record from that night. I might get them right away, but the police can make me wait a few days. Tomorrow I can probably see what’s available in District Court records.

Since that night Steve has missed his court date twice. He’s scheduled to appear again on March 2.

I’ll post whatever I know here as soon as I know it.

In the meantime as the weeks have gone by since that night I’ve had cause to think about that couple and wonder what’s going on with them. Absent court records, I’m not sure what I might find. I have no plans to drive out to the mobile home to ask around.

There’s also the lingering question of whether what I did was a smart thing to do. When I agreed to give them a ride, I was operating under the faith that they were as safe as they turned out to be. Some might look at crime statistics in Bremerton and tell me I’m crazy. I would counter that in most violent crimes the victims know the assailants. Then again, there is probably a profile for people who find themselves sitting on the curb in front of 7-Eleven. I’d like to think that if something would have been terribly wrong, that I would have felt strongly enough to turn them down. But good people, way better than me, have found themselves unwarned before.

Again it reminded me that the things we fear most are things that are not real. One those things become real, we’re not afraid of them anymore. If I walk through the woods and I’m afraid of bears, well there is no bear. Once there is one, I’m not afraid that there is a bear, I’m afraid it will attack me. And on an on. All my fears were about what might happen. Once I get a chance to look at those public records, I guess I might learn a little more about what that might have been.

So this story isn’t over just yet. I’ll come back and let you know what I know. But I’m satisfied knowing that in the best case scenario I won’t get the answer to everything. I hope you can too.