Have you ever thought you saw something and then had to do a double take because you weren’t quite sure if you saw it correctly the first time? Well this happened to me earlier this week and it was during what looked like a robbery.
I was driving through different neighborhoods and streets talking with one of my friends, as we had done many times before, in preparation to saying goodbye before we both leave for our second year of college. I looked down at my clock in my car and saw that it was midnight and decided to call it a night.
I told my friend I was going to drop her off and decided to take the scenic route to her house and entered into her neighborhood through a different entrance than normal. I was around 10 houses from my friend’s driveway when we both saw something unusual. We saw a white van that was unmarked, had no license plate, with its hazard lights flashing sitting in the middle of the street; suddenly a man wearing all black ran from a house, threw something into the back of his van, and sped away.
We both paused for a second trying to collect our thoughts on what we just saw. When we both came to, we realized we had just witnessed a robbery and decided to call 911. I had my friend take pictures of the van, yet didn’t realize at the time how useless they were without a license plate, while I called the police.
While on the phone with the 911 operator, I pulled my car into another neighborhood and waited there while I finished answering all the operator’s questions. She told me to sit in my car and wait until an officer arrived. 30-45 seconds later, a police officer pulled up next to my car, asked me which way the van had driven and told me to sit tight.
After he drove away, another cop car pulled up, and another, and another; 9 cop cars in total passed my car while I waited in the same place the first officer told me to stay. One of the nine cars pulled up next to us and asked if we were sure it wasn’t something as simple as the paper man. We told him it wasn’t and he answered with, “Alright. Someone will be back to talk to you shortly.”
Around 5 minutes later the first officer I had spoken to pulled up next to my car. I rolled down my window and immediately he said, “Sir, we caught the man.” I replied with, “That’s great! What exactly did he steal?” He responded simply with, “Sir.” And I replied again with, “Yes, officer?” He said, “The man was an Oberweis milk delivery man.”
Right then and there my heart sunk to the bottom of my stomach and I felt like a complete idiot. I apologized numerous times to the officer and thanked him for all his work. He told me, “Don’t worry about it. You did the right thing by calling us when you saw something out of the ordinary. Have a good night.” Then drove away.
Immediately my friend and I burst out laughing. We had just called the cops on a milk delivery man. All I can say is, thank you to the police officers who showed up. I hope you had a good laugh when you caught the “robber” and realized it wasn’t anything serious after all.
