Almost 20 years later, Randy is still waiting for that apology
Where are the young men now who broke into my home 19 years ago? We heard back then that they, part of a gang of young boys who drove our north side neighborhood crazy over one long, hot summer, were all at the time from 11 to 15 years old. We’d see them in twos and threes riding through the streets on their bikes that summer, all wearing different shades of yellow or gold tees or tops, smiling when they passed you, sometimes saying hello—and when the burglaries started, the clues immediately led us to make the connection.
First off, whoever was breaking into homes all across Laburnum Park was obviously young. For instance, when our home was robbed early one evening as we were across town at our children’s Little League game, the thieves took baseball cards, video games, movies, the kids’ cameras and radios, and a bunch of toys—along with my UR class ring, some other jewelry and electronics.
I can’t remember how many homes fell victim to these little Oliver Twists that summer, but there were a good many, and the neighbors were not a happy lot. One beautiful day when a lot of us were out in our yards, the cry went up that a burglary had been interrupted at a house around the block. The young man had run and had quickly disappeared—so quickly that we knew he was still in the neighborhood, hiding. So dozens of us started to search, looking behind boxwoods and vehicles, under porches and in trees—and finally he was found hiding behind a garage. The neighbors surrounded him (fortunately he was not armed) and kept him there until police arrived. One down, and the robberies continued.
A week or so later, a lady from a nearby street (who coincidentally happened to work with troubled youth) was driving down her alley when she saw a young man passing by wearing her distinctive red satin soccer shorts—the ones that had been stolen when her house was robbed a few days previously. So she got out of her car, threw him to the ground, and sat on him until police arrived. We heard later from her that he had squealed on other gang members, and that at least some of them were young men from good families, that they had been divvying up the loot and dropping off the jewelry and electronics with a fence in their own neighborhood … and then that was the end of it.
Literally, the end of it, for after that, we never heard another word, not from the police or from anyone else in authority. If there had been a hearing or a trial, we never learned of it. If they were punished, we were never told what the punishment was. If anything was recovered, we never knew it. Because the young men were juveniles, all action and records were closed.
Over the years, I have thought about those kids many times. I always hoped that one day I’d get a note in the mail or a young man would turn up at my door with an apology. He would write or say, “I sorry I stole so many of the things your kids had worked so hard to earn. I’m sorry I took the irreplaceable video of your daughter coming home from the hospital as an infant—I mistook it for a movie. I’m sorry I stole the UR ring that you would have passed on to your son when he went to Richmond. I apologize for the destruction in your home, for pouring orange Gatorade on your living room carpet, for pulling all your books off the shelves and upending your mattresses and making a general mess of your house. I regret invading your home and frightening your wife and children. What can I do now, all these years later, as an upstanding citizen, an adult in my thirties, to make it up to you?”
But, of course, none of that ever happened, none of that was ever said. Did any of the boys in that “gang” indeed grow up to be responsible citizens? Are they out there working in banks or offices? Are some or all of them in jail? Surely at least one or two of them, being from good families, must—as my mother would have said—turned out all right.
If so, that one should have written me, and others in the neighborhood, or had the courage to come back to our door and say he was sorry.
And if he’s not sorry, I hope that long ago he’s managed to forget our address.
