Dennis and I returned home Saturday night after our long road trip/vacation which took us through the midwest, Utah and the south. It was great to see our son, Derek, who's attending violin making school out in Salt Lake City, good to see my old college haunts, Traverse City and the upper peninsula of Michigan again and we had a brief but great visit with a couple of AT hikers who both my husband and Derek know, presently living in North Carolina near the Smoky Mountains.
But we did have one disturbing incident - one that made us realize how the victims of racial profiling must feel. As we were heading east on I-80 through Nebraska, we glimpsed a series of notices on the digital signs over the interstate announcing an amber alert for a missing 15 year old girl, Melody Gibbs. In case you're unfamiliar with this term, an amber alert is posted for abducted children. We also caught the notice on the radio a few times. The abductor was driving a red Hyundai Accent with New York plates, was about 30 - 35 years old and could be heading either east toward NY or south in the direction of Alabama.
Dennis laughed and said, "Hah, that could be us." My car is a red Accura with New York plates but we could see somebody who hadn't paid close attention mistaking it for the perp's vehicle. No more than half an hour later, I noticed a state trooper following us with his lights flashing. I wasn't speeding so I suspected it had something to do with the amber alert. I was right. The state trooper took one glimpse at Dennis and I, kind of laughed and said they'd received about 10 calls on our car (mostly from truckers, I suspect), mistaking it for the abductor's car. It only took him a nanosecond for him to realize he had the wrong vehicle. He didn't even bother to check our license and a minute later we were on our way again.
An hour or so later we headed southeast on 129 through Missouri. It was a route that took us through lots of local traffic as it wound its way past countless small Missouri towns. We hadn't been on the road more than half an hour before once again we noticed a police car following us, lights flashing. This time Dennis was driving. The police officer introduced himself as sergeant somebody. "You were going a little fast back there." Yeah, but everybody else was passing us like we were standing still. This wasn't the reason he stopped us. "There's an amber alert," he told us, "for a car matching your car's description."
"Wasn't that a Hyundai Accent?" I asked.
"Uh, yes, but it had New York plates."
"And wasn't the driver a 30 something guy?"
Instead of answering me, he asked Dennis for his license. Obviously we were not child abductors. Instead of admitting he'd made a mistake, however, he asked us a ton of questions. What are you doing in Missouri? Where are you coming from? Where did you stop for the night? Where are you headed now? Whose car is this?
We started feeling that we were the victims. About this time, we noticed two other police vehicles pulling up behind him with reinforcements. What the #$#*^! They asked Dennis to open the trunk. In retrospect, perhaps I should have opened the trunk, since it's my car. Perhaps they would have backed off. Our trunk was jammed with camping equipment and duffle bags. No dead bodies or hidden weapons. Finally they let us go. As if that wasn't bad enough, a few miles down the road, again we noticed the police following closely behind us. This time 2 cars were right on our tail. This was within the same county, the same town where the police should have been in touch with each other. The two police cars continued to tailgate us for the next 10 miles or so until finally we drove beyond the area of their jurisdiction. Now we were upset.
Our car and its license plate number did not match that of the abductor's. And neither Dennis or I matched the description of the perpetrator. It was as if they just wanted to give us a hard time for being New Yorkers. It made us realize how minorities feel when they're harassed simply because of their race or the color of their skin. The only thing we were guilty of was driving a red car with NY plates.
It will be a long time before I set foot in the state of Missouri again.
