Monday, May 18, 2009

COSTA RICA SUPER HERO

My son, the extremely tall handsome one is a hero! That is right he is like the hero of Heredia at this very moment. Saturday night I returned home after a month in Arizona and Texas and I was warmly greeted by the clan. It was a great welcome home party, but the tall one was missing.
About the time we finally decided to eat we got a phone call. He was calling to tell us that he had to go to the police station. You can imagine our gut twisting with this call, having one in jail in the U. S. is bad enough! But he then went on to tell us the whole story.
Apparently he had just gotten off the bus from San Jose in downtown Heredia and was walking over to get his connecting bus home. As he was walking down the street he noticed a couple. The guy was bear hugging the girl from behind and she was screaming. At first he thought they were a couple arguing, understandable since he still does not have mastery of Spanish. He kind of paused and looked closer as she called for help. He finally asked her in Spanish if everything was alright. She just looked at him and yelled in English no HELP! That was all he needed. He jumped on the guy and shoved him away. The guy actually came back and tried to grab her again. He was after her cell phone by the way. He grabbed him and pushed him again, this time hard enough to knock him down.
I guess he finally decided that he had had enough and he took off running. Two guys that were also watching joined in the chase and the three of them knocked him down and held him until the cops showed up.
When the cops got there they actually took all of them down to make a statement against the guy. They probably let him go five minutes later, but at least that was one less cell phone they got that night!
There is a movement among the youth to take the streets back. There have been about three incidents my son has witnessed where the people are chasing the robbers off and sometimes pummeling them pretty good. He even saw two cops taking care of a guy with their fists.
I am just proud that my son had the sense and courage to help someone. I did ask him to hold off if they had a gun or knife.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

nice having big tall sons, eh? mine are going to learn krav maga or some really nasty karate... me, too!

Book Lover Lisa said...

Wow, way to go Jacob!