When Crazy Shows Up in Your Neighborhood

Night terrors of an anguished mind — nothing good happens after midnight.

For a Tuesday night, I had stayed up too late anyway — couldn’t sleep, so I caught up on a few episodes of, “This Is Us.” The perfect show to torture your psyche with extreme realism no one needs before drifting into blissful slumber. What was I thinking? Damn, Miguel died.

Around 1:00 am, I finally drifted off, only to be startled awake by a shattering boom. It sounded as if someone had crashed their car into a wall. I thought I must be dreaming. Then I heard a screeching tire sound and another boom.

My neighborhood is normally quiet. Some would say idyllic. Rolling green hills, pristine tree-lined streets, and a nature walk is right outside the door. My morning alarm clock is birds chirping outside my bedroom window.

Nestled in the hills is a gated community with a beautiful golf course and a country club within walking distance. Coyotes, foxes, ducks, deer, and mountain lions share our habitat. The first few years after moving into our home, the view of adjacent hills was nothing but cows grazing.

Everything must change.

When I heard the third boom, I jumped out of bed, and tilted the shutters to witness absolute horror. The streetlight spotlighted someone raging — purposely ramming their brand-new KIA SUV with happy tags into my neighbor’s garage doors. Five of them were hit.

As I entered the twilight zone, they sped out of our cul-de-sac in slow motion.

My husband threw on some clothes and took our German Shepard with him downstairs to see if our garage door was on the hit list. “They got us. Call the police,” he said.

The first boom I heard was ours.

The police showed up before I could call. My husband followed them down the street to get a police report. They caught and arrested the woman on the last leg of her rampage.

He took a picture of her car and license plate, and said it hardly had any damage. Strewn all over the grass were some of her belongings: pictures of children, a pack of cigarettes, and a new pair of crocs — remnants of a normal life.

Of all the wreckage she caused, her car barely had a scratch, but her heart and mind had to be totaled.

Left in the aftermath, our garage door’s bottom panels inverted — crushed in the middle. Rollers lay on the ground popped from the side of an open sliver of space, not wide enough to squeeze through.

I envisioned my car bumper crushed, too. There was no way to open the garage door — my work laptop was in the trunk.

Soon the entire neighborhood was abuzz at 2:00 am, at least those of us who heard the commotion. Sound sleepers slept through the ruckus of busted, splintered, broken garage doors. It was almost comical seeing WTF register on their faces in unison the next morning.

According to the receptionist at the homeowner’s association, the phone lines were blowing up. They were watching a video from security trying to figure out their communication strategy. We all wanted to know who handled repairs. Who else? Us.

This Is Us took on a greater meaning. Before, we were neighbors in passing with no significant connection. Now banned together within a bizarre experience, we were open to forming a bond to help each other.

Could this be the lesson? I’ve been scratching my head over this one.

The homeowner’s association was nice about offering us a couple of vendors. Their advice; call your insurance company. Good luck. Everyone knows insurance companies move at a snail’s pace. We’ll all end up paying out of pocket, initially.

When I called a local garage door company for an estimate and relayed the story, I could see dollar signs floating across the owner’s forehead over the phone after planting the idea of a volume discount because he was about to hit the garage door lottery.

He could feel my sense of urgency — missing two days of work from lack of sleep and because I couldn’t do my job remotely. All the network connections I needed were in the trunk. The only thing I could do was answer emails.

I sent my boss a picture of my garage — who would believe this story otherwise?

Tidbits of information started surfacing. The woman had hit almost forty garage doors within a five-mile radius of our home, including the gated community — she plowed through the security gate. A few neighbors had first-hand witness accounts of her odd behavior.

She knocked on some of their doors, babbling incoherently. Rumored, she said she was on crack and invincible. I wonder how that’s working out. Her picture is now plastered on Nextdoor.com, along with damaged garage doors.

White female, blonde shoulder-length hair, mid-fifties, average height, soft smile. Wait, smile? Not the deranged picture you’d imagine.

Curiosity spawned novice photojournalists videotaping everyone’s garage doors with their iPhones. One lady stopped in front of my house while I was creating a video inspection with my insurance adjuster for his file. When I turned around, she stared straight ahead and drove off.

I realize the pandemic has taken its toll and empathize with those less fortunate, but to lash out and wreak havoc on innocent bystanders is mind-boggling. It’s happening all over the world — someone just shot up a grocery store in New York.

Part of me feels sorry for the woman. The other part is out of a thousand dollars in home and auto deductibles for nothing — a random victim of another human being’s unraveling. When people can’t process their pain it manifests into violent acts against others who had nothing to do with their suffering.

Sure, I’ll get the money back. The time, loss of sleep, and wasted ill-placed energy are gone forever.

We’ll never know the circumstances of her actions, but my guess is the people in her life did not see or love her enough to recognize signs something was awry in her being — a deep disconnect in her soul.

We should all sharpen our awareness of people we are in relationships with — have tough conversations, and care enough to ask if they’re okay. Sometimes, one question is the gateway to deeper understanding.

7 tips on how to talk to someone about their mental health:

1. Practice active listening: Active listening differs from just hearing what a person has to say. Good listeners put everything aside, ask open-ended questions to get more detail about a topic and summarize what they’ve heard for clarity and understanding.
2. Don’t compare: It’s best not to compare how you may have handled a personal struggle to theirs. Everyone is different.
3. Ask what you can do: Ask what they need, not what you think they need.
4. Keep your word: If you’ve committed to something on their behalf, don’t disappoint them. The feeling of abandonment and mistrust is the last thing they need.
5. Don’t judge: Put your personal opinions aside.
6. Offer to join them: Help with obligations they are feeling inept to take care of themselves.
7. Know when more serious help is needed: If you notice their mood or mental condition isn’t improving after months, don’t be afraid to suggest they may need more help.

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” ~Maya Angelou