Meet My Guardian Angels

I don't know their names, but I know they are there.  How else can I explain my luck?

I thought about them when I came upon an accident the other day on Highway 101. It was a multi-car collision, which must have just happened because emergency vehicles were not there yet.  I thanked the stars and my guardian angels for keeping me delayed from my destination that day or else I'm sure I would have been involved.  Have you had that happen to you before?  With respect to car accidents, missing them by minutes has happened to me many times when I know that if I had left sooner, I would have been part of the wreckage.

There were many stories like that when 9/11 happened.  These included folks who missed the doomed flights.  There were others who rescheduled later flights or earlier flights because plans changed at the last minute.  It truly wasn't their time, and I'm fairly sure their guardian angels had something to do with that.

The one time I will never forget when my guardian angels showed up was when I was living in New York City.  Although I don't remember the exact date when it happened, I still remember the circumstances vividly.  I know it was a weekday because my routine was to work late, and I usually had a Fedex package to send daily.  I didn't worry about missing pickup times because I would usually go to the Fedex store on 7th Avenue that closed at 9:00 p.m.  It was about a 10-minute walk from my apartment.  I lived in West Village on Sullivan Street at Bleecker Street a couple of blocks from Washington Square Park in the New York University vicinity.  My routine was to go to Fedex around 8:45 p.m. before it closed.  On my way back, I would pick up dinner from one of so many places along the way.  It was NYC, and that was such a luxury.

On this particular night, I decided to leave earlier because I wanted to go to the card store around the corner from where I lived.  I knew the card store closed at 8:00 p.m.  And I knew that card store well because I frequented the place but usually only during the day.  Something, however, made me go there that night.  I will insist it was my guardian angels.

So after the card store, I went to Fedex.  Then I picked up dinner but don't remember from which place exactly.  My favorite place was this taqueria on my street block that was run by Asians.  I believe they were Burmese or Laotian.  That was different - best Mexican food I had while I was living in NYC - made by Asians.  It reminded me constantly of this sushi restaurant in Brisbane run by Filipinos.  It's one of the best sushi places, and I frequented it while I lived in Daly City.  I still go there on rare occasions.

Moving on, at my apartment at 207 Sullivan Street, Apartment 8, 4th floor, I was eating and watching television when I heard gunfire, lots of it.  The gunshots were so loud that they frightened me to shut all my lights off and hide in my bedroom closet.  Then I heard someone yell, "Put the guns down!" Right after that, there was a series of pop pop pop pop pop pop, like a fireworks finale when a fireworks show culminates in a rapid fire, bright, multi-colored spectacle.  At least that's what I pictured at that moment, or wanted to picture at that moment.  Then there was eerie silence.  And then sirens.

I waited until I felt it was safe to peek out my window.  This was probably a 5-minute lapse.  I left the lights off and walked over to the window.  When I looked down at the street below, I saw what looked like a police officer lying on the ground surrounded by people.  He was on the sidewalk across the street, not moving.  I surmised he was dead.  I didn't leave my apartment after that, not even for a mini Cherries Garcia Ben & Jerry's ice cream snack at the bodega right on the corner of Bleecker & Sullivan.  I normally would walk across the street in my pajamas for that particular midnight treat, but not that night.  I didn't want any part of the NYC streets that night.

I turned on the news and learned about what happened.  Through the night and into the next day, the story of a crazy gunman unfolded.  He was angry at a manager of a pizza parlor on MacDougal Street, several blocks from my apartment.  That day, he plotted and carried with him two guns and hundreds of bullets.  When he was at the pizza parlor, he executed the manager in the back and then took off.  A couple of auxiliary police officers, who are more like unarmed volunteer cadets, decided to follow him.  The gunman turned right on Bleecker and then turned left on Sullivan.  He became aware that the auxiliary police officers were following him, and he shot one.  He knew the other one was trying to hide behind a car.  Coldly, the gunman approached and shot him at almost point blank range.  This was captured on a school surveillance camera, which was focused on Sullivan Street on the very block where my apartment was located.   (I almost forgot there was a school on my block.  It was a long block.)  The gunman then started to backtrack to Bleecker.  Police officers were already alerted, including off-duty officers who were in the area, and they surrounded an accessories store next to my favorite bodega.  The store is where the gunman fled into.  He then came out, with his readied guns.  A police officer yelled, "Put the guns down!"  When he didn't, they fired a series of pop pop pop pop pop pop, like a fireworks finale when a fireworks show culminates in a rapid fire, bright, multi-colored spectacle.  The storefront glass shattered, and the gunman was killed.

If my guardian angels had not pushed me out the door early to get to the card store before it closed, I know I would have run into the crazy gunman on Sullivan Street.  I probably would have been wasted or at least witnessed the execution of the second auxiliary police officer.  But it wasn't my time.

The sad part was that the auxiliary officers were so young and so eager to work toward a career in law enforcement.  They probably helped tremendously with putting a stop to the gunman because it was reported that with the amount of ammunition he carried, he probably wanted to do much more damage.

I didn't know the news spread clear across the country.  When my brother Zaldy and his wife Lien came to visit me, Zaldy mentioned the incident that he heard on the news.  I told him it happened right on Sullivan.  I told him to look across the street and see the flowers left at the very spot where one of the auxiliary officers had died.

Today, my guardian angels continue to protect me.  God sent them.