I Survived Near Strangulation in Paradise

My near-death experience

Just Another Day

November 12, 1998, Puerto Vallarta: Another day in a beach town. A favored destination for its tropical weather, a city at the heart of a large bay that protected it from hurricanes.

We had survived what they call the Seven Hungers (Siete Hambres) — the local word for September — the slowest month of the year for the tourism industry. Things were looking up for my husband (now ex), who worked the timeshare hustle. I was home with our baby daughter, awaiting his return from work.

We lived on the fourth (and top) floor of a small apartment complex with a large balcony shared by the three apartments on that floor and overlooking the street below. It was cobblestoned but still a main thoroughfare out of the quaint tourist town toward the larger resorts and the airport to the north. We were fortunate to live on the back side of the complex where we were somewhat sheltered from the rumble and squeak of constant buses, taking on passengers at nearly every corner.

While I usually loved taking my 7-month-old baby girl out in the stroller to walk the Malecon along the beachfront, there were days that I didn’t feel like lugging the stroller up and down four flights of stairs.

This was one of those days. So, to put my daughter to sleep, I wheeled her out in the stroller onto the balcony, walking her around and around, occasionally looking over the railing to see if her father had arrived home for the evening. I always looked for his car coming down the hill and parking along the street.

My baby quickly fell asleep to the rhythm of the turns around that twelve-by-thirty-foot landing and the sounds of the passing traffic below. After a while, I took her into the apartment and put her in her crib for a proper nap.

I didn’t lock the door.

Not because it was idyllic Puerto Vallarta. Not because I expected my husband to arrive at any moment. Not because I felt particularly safe four stories up and in the back.

I didn’t lock the door simply because I forgot. I put my daughter in her crib and simply forgot to lock the door. I grew up in large cities; I was accustomed to securing the doors. My husband was from Mexico City; we’d spent a year there before moving to Puerto Vallarta. Locking the doors was practically an imperative.

After I was sure my baby was sound asleep, I headed to the other side of the apartment to watch television in the master bedroom.

Our apartment was like a large shoebox, a rectangle. The front door opened into the far side of a large open-plan living room-dining room-kitchen area. Just to the right of the front door was my daughter’s bedroom. Across the open living space was the master bedroom, so indicated because it had the bathroom in it.

Intruder

It wasn’t long before I heard a noise coming from the living room area. I got up to tell my husband to be quiet and not wake the baby.

But it wasn’t my husband I saw.

A young man was bent over a table, unplugging a boom box. A thief was in my house. He looked up as I gasped, took the radio in his hands, and exited through the front door.

Panicked, I ran to my daughter’s room to make sure she was safe. I was relieved to find her safe and sound in her crib, still sleeping on her stomach.

I turned around and noticed that the front door was ajar.

I don’t even know how to describe what was going through my mind at this point. I knew what I had seen. A stranger had been in my house. He had stolen from us.

I peeked out the front door, hoping he had gone. Only four flights of stairs, half a block’s run, and a hop on the city bus out of town, and hopefully, I’d never see him again.

The first thing I saw when I looked out the door was the radio, sitting just to the right of the door. For a nano-second, I thought he had decided to leave it behind in his mad dash for the stairs.

How wrong I was.

He grabbed my neck and began to strangle me. He had been just to the other side of the radio. Not out of sight, just out of my hopeful mind.

Now, I was gasping for breath and fighting… for my life. He would leave no witnesses to his crime.

The Fight

Time misbehaves in moments like these. It stretches out interminably, mere moments lasting forever; long stretches of time reduced to flashes.

I don’t know how long I was in the fight. I do know that I squirmed and wriggled, looking for any opening between the hands around my neck to suck in some badly needed air. At one point, he was kneeling over me, and I tried to grab his genitalia. Alas, his denim pants were stretched tight with his spread legs, and I was unable to fend off his attack with a punch to the groin. At another point, his finger was close enough to my mouth for me to bite; I clenched my teeth only to be repulsed at the thought of his blood and flesh in my mouth.

I was still fighting though. Somehow, I wrestled him away from my front door, halfway out onto the balcony. His hands were still firmly around my throat, crushing my windpipe. If only a neighbor were home. If I could scream, maybe someone would hear me.

I managed to get in a good scream, gulping for air at the same time. My daughter had awakened from the noise and was now screaming in her crib. This was not the cry of an infant awakened from hunger. This was the scream of a baby connected by life to her mother, who was now in the throes of death. The intruder was now banging my head on the tile floor.

All I could see in my mind’s eye was my husband arriving home to my lifeless body on the landing of the third floor of this rustic beach town apartment complex. What I failed to see in my mind’s eye was my daughter.

Don’t Give Up

I could feel the life draining from my body. The few breaths I had managed to take in this struggle weren’t enough to sustain me.

But as long as I heard my daughter’s cry, hope remained. I couldn’t give up. I wouldn’t give up.

I managed to eke out, even with his hands still around my throat, “Que quieres? Quieres dinero?” It was a stall tactic on my part. It could be a complete game changer, and this was no game.

I was still aware enough to think that time might be on my side. I remembered hearing that the longer a thief or criminal was on the scene, the greater the possibility he’d be caught.

Caught or not, I had to live, and I had to live for my daughter. Even if I expired after I was able to secure her safety, it would be enough.

At the mention of money, the energy changed. Maybe he thought this American woman had enough money to stop this madness, at least for a moment. He took me back inside the apartment and closed the front door. The baby was still crying, and I knew I needed to divert his attention. I nodded to the other bedroom on the far side of the apartment. “El dinero está ahí.”

He sat me down at the table in the dining area. He went into the kitchen to look for a knife, warning me to stay put. I was a formidable opponent, after all. I wasn’t giving up as easy as he had hoped.

Many of the kitchens in Puerto Vallarta are rustic. This kitchen didn’t have drawers for silverware and cutlery. It was all stored in a large cabinet in the living room and luckily not somewhere this thief would take the time or trouble to look.

He motioned for me to show him where the money was. I began to walk toward a bureau on my husband’s side of the bed, but he stopped me, pushing me onto the bed. He found an envelope with the equivalent in pesos of about $500 (USD) and my husband’s wedding ring in the drawer.

Take Me To My Baby

He had what he wanted, but the unceasing screaming from the other room caught his attention again.

“Get under the bed,” he told me forcefully in Spanish. Not wanting to enter into a life-or-death struggle again, I knelt and began to back under when he told me to go head first.

In a matter of milliseconds, I imagined him kidnapping my daughter, harming her, or worse. And I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I stood up and said with a hoarse voice, but from a force of my own, “NO! TAKE ME TO MY BABY.”

I don’t think he knew what to do, so he walked me to my daughter’s room and said, “Quedate aqui — Stay here.” He shut the bedroom door and walked out the front door to the stairs, leaving the boom box where he had left it before.

Four flights of stairs and a city bus headed north. I never saw him again, nor could I identify him in photos at the police station.

My daughter and I were alive, and that’s all that mattered.

Runa Heilung is an Old Soul Alchemist and dream archaeologist. She works with dreams, oracles, and the imagination to help people rediscover their Inner Wisdom. Follow her and/or Follow the Old Soul Alchemy publication!