We love our crime stories but at a distance. Criminals are fascinating as long as they get no closer than Netflix, a podcast, or the pages of a book. Then life brings the crime up close and personal.
My sister Sylvia and her spouse Janet were in Las Cruces, NM, visiting my 83-yo aunt Angelica. When returning to my aunt's home after completing mid-morning errands they saw that her car had been stolen. The fact it was missing was the first clue, then the evidence of broken glass, unusual tire prints on the lawn, and skid marks on the driveway. Sylvia immediately called the police. Astonishingly, within a half-hour, the car was found, missing its license plates and coated with black paint so fresh it was still wet. Six police cars and a K9 unit converged at the Coachlight Inn Motel and RV Park near I-10 and Motel Blvd. To see what kind of a place it is, check out the Yelp reviews. The motel is a hangout for criminals and drug trafficking and so the cops get kudos for connecting the dots in a hurry.
My aunt lives in the house on Kay Lane she had inherited from my parents. I lived there from the time I was ten and until I graduated from college. We lived at that address because an outbreak of meningitis in my old neighborhood had killed several children and left my sister mentally disabled. When my mother noticed that the victims were all Mexican, she insisted that we move to the white part of town because the government would have never allowed such a disease to rage through the Caucasian community. At the time, the neighborhood was middle-class, a lot of government workers and contractors. A neighbor up the street was a lawyer who drove a big shiny Cadillac.
Now the area looks like Detroit in the desert. Plenty of broken windows covered with cardboard or scraps of plywood. Abandoned appliances. When the neighborhood was first designed in the early 1960s, grassy lawns and mulberry trees were the norm. To conserve water, the city now insists on xeriscaping, which means the forlorn lots are surrounded by dusty patches.
Attracted by the commotion at my aunt's house, neighbors told my sister that the vicinity is known as a "weed and seed," a local colloquialism meaning the area is where the city dumps people with behavioral issues--i.e., drugs and criminal acts. Thefts and break-ins are common. We suspect the thieves cased my aunt's house, targeting her car because it was an easy model to steal and seeing when she had left, jumped at the opportunity. My sister noted that the details of the crime--New Mexico, drugs, GTA, sketchy-ass lowlives operating out of a sketchy-ass motel--made the experience like an episode of Breaking Bad.
As you can expect, my aunt was shaken by the ordeal. When she saw what these crooks had done to her car--broken window, busted ignition and steering column, ransacked interior, rasquache paint job--she began to cry. Her sense of security vanished, replaced by fear and paranoia. She can't simply move away. Selling the house in that depressed neighborhood would be challenge, plus she got a notice from her home insurance that because of squatters, they would suspend coverage if the premises was left unoccupied.
Yes, life is much better when crime keeps its distance.
