Scenes of summer

BY STAVROS KORONEOS

Rack and roll

PINE JUNCTION – It was after midnight on June 10, and the dgety gure loitering outside his house was giving him cause to pause. Clad in an orange sweatshirt and dark pants, the antsy idler appeared entirely too interested in the rental truck he’d parked out front, the one stu ed bumper to bumper with his cherished personal belongings. Still, he kept his cool and kept a sharp eye out until he heard what sounded like the dubious dawdler “racking” a gun, which was his signal to dial 911. Responding deputies had no trouble locating the suspicious skulker, but couldn’t nd evidence that he’d tampered with the truck. On the other hand, the fellow did have a pistol on his person and was the prime suspect in a burglary the night before. e complainant declined to press trespassing charges, but the suspect spent the remainder of the night loitering in a 6-by-8 holding cell anyway.

Back door boys

EL RANCHO – As crimes go, it had promise. e two teenaged boys sauntered in smooth and easy, slouched back to the beer case and grabbed a couple of 12 packs, neat as you please. en, and here’s the genius of it, instead of walking back through the store toward the checkout area they casually steered for a rear exit through the automotive department, which is where their best-laid plan ganged catastrophically agley. Success was in sight when an employee suddenly appeared between them and the door. Startled, one of the lads “fell down,” dropping his cold-brewed booty in the process. Switching seamlessly to Plan B, the pair raced for the front entrance. Hindered in his ight for freedom by the 30-pound party in his hand, the second boy chose escape over alcohol and jettisoned his load somewhere near o ce supplies. In the end, the only thing that went right was the getaway, and while store security provided JCSO with surveillance footage of the young pilsner pirates, the case quickly went cold.

Hurt locker EVERGREEN – It should have been a milk run. At the request of a friend, Dodge Ram went to the storage facility on the afternoon of June 6, entered the key code to open the facility’s gate, then used the key his friend gave him to retrieve some items from the friend’s storage locker. His simple task accomplished, Dodge was attempting to leave when Nissan Titan quickly positioned himself in the middle of the exit and challenged Dodge to provide proof of his honest inten- tions, starting with a lot of “personal information.” Noting that Nissan wasn’t carrying a badge, Dodge told Nissan he had no authority to grill a tax-paying citizen and advised him to make way. Nissan told Dodge to prove that he was on site legitimately by re-entering the gate code. Dodge did, and when the gate opened he moved to drive through it. Nissan leapt from his vehicle and started “screaming” at Dodge, which caught the attention of several facility employees, who came at a run. Feeling that his simple task was spinning dangerously out of control, Dodge gunned it out of the storage yard, clipping Nissan on the way. Nissan and several employees jumped into their vehicle and followed in hot pursuit. Seriously rattled by both the turn of events and the angry posse on his tail, Dodge saw a crowd gathered at Chief Hosa Campground and, seeking the safety of public observation, pulled in there and was instantly hemmed in by the Nissan brigade. After sorting through a tangle of testimonies, JCSO released Dodge after issuing him citations for third-degree assault and criminal mischief, charges Dodge accepted without complaint. Nissan complained, though, grousing that Dodge should have gone straight “to jail” and had his “vehicle impounded”

Mail call

EVERGREEN – ere’s no time to lose! Mrs. Kravitz told JCSO on the afternoon of June 9. She’d just seen a man in a camper brazenly “stealing mail” in her Evergreen Lake neighborhood and was at that very moment getting away with the goods on Hwy 73. Deputies pulled Camper over at Heritage Grove and asked his if he’d stolen any mail recently. Camper appeared “shocked,” saying he was, in fact, a seasonal resident of Mrs. Kravitz’s neighborhood and hadn’t stolen anything but ne lake views. If there’s a crime to be investigated, Camper continued, somebody egged his camper. Deputies easily con rmed Camper’s residency and, with his full permission, conducted a light search before declaring his vehicle hot-mail-free. Informed by phone of that happy resolution, Mrs. Kravitz was bitterly unhappy, saying she wanted Camper out of the neighborhood. Asked if she knew anything about a recent egg-throwing incident, Mrs. Kravitz brusquely “hung up.”

Sheri ’s Calls is intended as a humorous take on some of the incident call records of the Je erson County Sheri ’s O ce for the mountain communities. Names and identifying details have been changed, including the writer’s name, which is a pseudonym. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty.

Sometimes we just have to laugh at ourselves, right? Or is it that sometimes we just have to laugh with ourselves?

I am not laughing at you; I am laughing with you kind of thinking as we look in the mirror. My laughing at myself moment came the other day while I was traveling. I had boarded my ight and was checking my email on my phone before we took o . As I tried loading my email app, it took about 8 seconds. And in those 8 seconds I became frustrated and thought why is this taking so long? Cue the laughing at myself. Each year as technology advances our need for speed seems to advance with it. We want information and we want it now. We not only want it now, but we also expect the information to be fed to us before we even have to think about it, we train the technology to understand what we like and want before we ever even have to search for it, we simply turn on our device and lo and behold there it is waiting for us to consume it.

In a recent meeting with a partner,

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