The People in the Bank Are Lying on the Floor

Eve Simmons

Welcome friends!

I’m glad you’re here.

One of my favorite philosophies is, “Look for the good, and sure enough you’ll find it.” I try to live by this motto, and when I do, it never fails me. Savoring the most positive aspects of any situation and seeking humor in it whenever possible ushers in healing, life lessons, forgiveness, joy, and peace.

Astrologically speaking, I’m a fire sign. I’ve always liked a little excitement. Maybe it’s the dopamine or cortisol, or the adrenaline rush. Or maybe it’s the euphoria that follows.

With those thoughts in mind, here’s a bit of fun. A crazy-yet-absolutely-true story from my life that captures the “Find the good” principle in a rather action-packed way. I hope you enjoy…

“The People in the Bank Are Lying on the Floor!”

by Eve Simmons

This old biddy kept hitting me with her huge purse. I mean, she was walloping me with it. We’re talking surprisingly hard smacks here, big swings for a frail little gal. I turned my back in self-defense and hunched my shoulders up, thus shielding my body and the wall phone from her blows. I was just trying to make the call. What the Hell? This nut-job lady was NOT making things any easier. Though, to be fair (not that I wanted to be fair), I get how it must have looked to her.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the bank robbery. So, you wouldn’t think a health food store would be bad for your health, right? Except for those few minutes in 1982, it felt more like Vietnam in the 1960s. That was my only frame of reference for armed combat. Ok, that’s dating me, but screw it, I miss Walter Cronkite – don’t you? He was the ultimate icon of believability. Besides, when the TV news was in black and white, it had to be true!

Alright, so bullets started flying, piercing the commercial-grade windows like a hot knife through butter, whizzing above us as we lay flattened on the cool linoleum floor. Zzzzip! Ping! Crack! Ping! Bottles of Vitamin C were popping off shelves like Doc Holiday was showboating at the OK Corral. Wait… Did they even have vitamin C back then? And if they did, shouldn’t Doc have been taking it for his black-lung/emphysema/typhoid-type thing? Who knows, maybe that would have saved him. Right, back to the story.

Our micro-managing manager stomped out from the rear of the store.

“What the heck is going on?” he demanded, arms crossed.

Waving our hands from our prone positions, customers and clerks alike yelled,

“Get down! Get down! It’s the bank! They’re shooting!”

Eyes wide… half smiling, “Wuut?” he asked in disbelief.

Zzzip! Rattle! Crash! Ping! Jhoop! The shop crackled, things smashing here and there.

He flinched, then flinched again. Finally, the bizarre unreality of our warnings began to crystallize in his mind. Once it did, that little guy never moved so fast in his life. No way he was going down with the ship. He spun on his heels and bolted back to the safety of his tiny office, immediately locking the door behind him. If hostages were taken, he wasn’t going to be one.

There was no…

“I’ll call the police!”, no…

“Guys! Crawl back this way!", no…

“We can hide back here!”

Yeah, the esprit de corps of 911 would not have been his forte.

But I digress…

Earlier that morning, I’d chatted with clean-cut Terry when he strolled into our shop as per usual, to say hello and offer his latest corny joke. Never mean-spirited, he was a family man. Funny, sharp, an all-around good guy, and a worthy conversation partner. He peppered in just enough sarcasm to cement the camaraderie, without ever going full smart-ass. I looked forward to his visits; we all did. He was a pleasant distraction from the monotony of ringing up sales and stocking shelves.

He was our protector, too. Not that any of us dreamed we’d ever need protecting. Terry was an LAPD cop moonlighting as a security guard for the West Los Angeles strip mall where my place of work, Vitamin Quota, was located.

Officer Terry’s plain-clothed gear included a loaded, holstered handgun worn under his jacket. (Or on some days strapped to his ankle.) In today’s verbiage, it would be called a concealed carry.

This was no mall cop; he was the real deal. What overkill, right? But the main piece of hardware he was packin’ was a mobile phone the size of Shaquille O’Neal’s shoe. Back in the early eighties, that’s how mobile phones came. If we ever encountered a shoplifter (which we didn’t), he could have thrown the phone at the perpetrator – surely causing bodily harm and stopping them in their tracks.

This lively small cluster of shops also housed a delicatessen, an ice cream parlor, a clothing boutique, and a local bank. It was a bastion of friendly suburban commerce. Our clientele was trendy hippies, yuppies, low-level entertainment industry workers, gym rats, new moms, and grey-haired gurus. What could possibly go wrong?

Terry’s phone number was posted on the wall with other important numbers, next to the landline telephone that hung directly behind register number one at Vitamin Quota. Register number two was only put into use for overflow during peak crowds, but register one saw all the action. On that day, it was ground zero.

I was working that register, right next to our glass storefront’s wide-opened double doors, which beckoned all that sunny day, when a highly impatient woman rushed in, interrupting my customer’s transaction and demanding my attention.

“YOU!” she aimed a bony finger at me. “Right now! Call the police!” she commanded.

“Wait, what?” I replied, my eyes scanning her appearance for any logical evidence of concern.

“The people in the bank are lying on the floor!” she declared, pointing a few yards away to the bank entrance directly facing us.

“WHAT?” I queried. Cut to my mind’s eye, suddenly playing a scene from the classic movie, “Dog Day Afternoon”, Al Pacino’s jittery character holding terrified hostages at gunpoint in the quintessential story of a bank robbery gone wrong.

“THE PEOPLE IN THE BANK ARE LYING ON THE FLOOR!” she yelled. Immediately, I pivoted to the wall phone, punching in Terry’s number.

“Terry? It’s Eve.” I stated loudly and clearly, “The people in the bank are lying on the floor!” (I’d decided repeating her words verbatim was the best way to go.) Cue the elderly woman to start pelting me with what felt like a 100-pound handbag.

“DON’T CALL YOUR FRIENDS! CALL THE POLICE!” she screamed at me. Hah! I thought. This is actually funny. She thinks I’m calling my friends – I get it.

“WHAT?” Officer Terry exclaimed - fascinating how everyone has that same initial response.

“TERRY, IT’S EVE. THE PEOPLE IN THE BANK ARE LYING ON THE FLOOR!” The blows to my back continued. This-is-when-things-got-real.

Unbeknownst to me, Terry was just a few steps away, visiting with the clothing shop owner next door, when I called him. As my words landed, he spun around to look at the bank entrance across from us, just as two bank robbers emerged. Their faces obscured by pantyhose pulled over their heads, their hands brandishing 9mm handguns, and satchels full of cash. Simultaneously, their accomplice was waiting in the driver’s seat of a stolen getaway car idling directly in front of our store.

“FREEZE! POLICE!” I heard Terry bellow, catching sight of him, gun drawn, edging towards my car for cover. “FREEZE! POLICE!” he repeated.

Wow! I thought, how - incredibly - brave. Then came the bullets zinging our way. Apparently, the robbers were disinclined to follow Terry’s directive.

I yelled, “Get down, get DOWN! and like an old western where Black Bart comes to town, all of us dove for the floor. It was in that moment that permanently I lost my desire for significant adrenaline hits going forward.

I was pinned down in front, trying to reach up and dial the operator for help (there was no nine-one-one in those days). With nothing but air between me and the bank robbers, nothing except brave Terry and the side of my parked car.

The bank robbers firing in our direction weren't trying to target us; likely the opposite, or you wouldn’t be reading this. They were creating cover fire to ensure their escape. And escape they did—at least for a while.

The next day, the newspaper showed a photo of the nine bullet holes decorating my beautiful blue Mazda RX7. It was parked in the right place at the right time. Windshield cracked, dashboard grazed, driver’s side window blown out, wheel well wrecked, door perforated like Swiss cheese.

I thought I’d loved that car before. But this was a whole new level. If it hadn’t been parked in exactly that spot, Terry wouldn’t have had the cover to confront the robbers as they were fleeing the bank, let alone return their fire, shooting the getaway driver in the arm.

Back then, I briefly wondered if it would have been better had I not called Terry for help after all. Second-guessing aside, it turned out to be exactly the right thing to do, since it was ballistics that finally caught up to them. This wasn’t the first time they’d fired their weapons during a heist. Those three men were part of a mafia-style, bank-robbing interstate gang out of Atlanta. They’d hit more banks than Jesse James, and authorities had been trying to catch them for years. The shell casings littering our crime scene came with microscopic scratches – each gun barrel creating its own unique bullet fingerprint – a match so distinct it linked them to every crime they’d committed with those guns, putting them behind bars for decades.

Surely the angels were with us, because nobody was injured, not even a scrape. In fact, the shared feelings of amazement and relief were so bountiful that the deli passed out coffee to the onlookers who’d gathered. Strangers hugged, tears of joy brimmed. And my previously beautiful car? Well, everyone chipped in to pay my insurance deductible on the repairs. And true to form, the biggest contribution came from Terry.

So yeah, thanks for asking, I’m just fine. Really, we all are. The bank patrons and staff lying on the floor, the deli diners and clothing store ladies, the pedestrians on the sidewalk, and all of us staffers and shoppers that day. We were all alive, and all safe. We felt damn lucky too, and especially grateful to the Officer Terrys out there, and the happy endings they gift us when they can. That’s the story worth remembering.