Tough Times for Pilgrims

Yesterday my neighbor and I watched, as a middle-aged Hispanic woman in cuffs was loaded into a police car in front of the supermarket near our homes. As I walked by, only a matter of feet away, I couldn’t stop myself from looking, but I was embarrassed, both for her and for all of the people who gawked at her humiliation. Rather than wonder what she had done to be arrested, my heart went immediately to the utter sadness that had brought her to be standing at the back door of a squad car, hands cuffed behind her back, a female officer quietly giving her instructions.

Shortly, while my neighbor and I stood in the checkout line, one of the store managers walked up to close our line. My neighbor asked about the woman who had been arrested. She had shop lifted $411 worth of goods. Did the store calculate the amount before or after calling the police? I commented to the manager that I felt sorry for the woman, even though I understand that stealing is wrong, regardless of the reason.

Of course, I have no clue of what the woman had loaded into her basket. At today’s prices $411 wouldn’t necessarily make a basket full. A couple of skinless chicken breasts, dozen eggs, loaf of bread, some milk, and so on—it doesn’t take much to run up a $50 tab. For a family of five, well, the math is relatively easy. Everywhere we turn the cost of making it keeps climbing. Yes, taking something that doesn’t belong to you is against the laws of our society. And I suppose that regardless of need, taking what doesn’t belong to you cannot be justified.

Yet I cannot get past the needs this woman, and her family, might have. Something drove her to steal. If she has a history—perhaps this is the first time she’s gotten caught, maybe not—she has to understand that shoplifting is against the law, and when we break the law we have to suffer the consequences. Back home, though, I wonder who was there to receive the call—“Your wife (your mother) (your daughter) has been arrested for shop lifting at the Albertson’s in DeVargas Mall.” I have no way of knowing the circumstances in which this life drama must be played out.

I am not judge and jury, although the woman’s crime might put her in court, and I could be one of the people chosen to judge her. Only then would I have any right to have a say in the fate of the accused, and even then, I would not have the luxury of knowing the context of her life. Most likely, all I will ever know is what I saw in front of Albertson’s on a sunny, cold Saturday afternoon, Memorial Day weekend, in paradise. And I guess I have to accept that this would-be paradise here is conflicted with the tough choices pilgrims have to make in a world growing tougher every day.

Tough Times for Pilgrims—Santa Fe New Mexico (May 25, 2008)

R. Harold Hollis