I and several coworkers were in the San Jose Convention Center during the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989. We were presenters at a Technology convention.
After the quake we picked our way through the roof panels, broken machines, and shattered glass.
Once outside we quickly realized that everything was changed. The public transportation system wasn’t running. There was small rubble in the roads, on the sidewalks, and some of the streets had cracked. In the distance we could hear sirens and see smoke. Later we learned the damage we picked our way through was nothing like the damage in San Francisco and Oakland but it was enough to make walking interesting.
We were all dressed in business attire. The ladies with me were in high heels and dresses. Standing there I realized that we were going to have to walk back to our hotel and connect with the rest of the folks from our company who were not at the convention center or who had left the center via different exits.
I explained my thought about getting back to the hotel to the ladies with me. After waiting a little while to see if there were others from our company wandering in the crowd, we set off on foot toward the hotel.
Picking our way through the loose rubble it became obvious that the ladies high heels were a problem. About a half mile from the convention center we came upon a shoe store. The windows were broken and there was no-one minding the shop. We entered the store and located sneakers in the proper sizes for the ladies.
At this point we were technically looters. We’d entered a building without permission, we were actively “stealing”.
Both of the ladies left notes stating the SKU number, size, and description of the sneakers they were taking. Those notes also contained their names, and phone numbers, with a promise of payment. The ladies put in their notes, “Thank you!” We slipped the notes into the locked register drawer and left in peace.
Several hours later we arrived at the hotel to find chaos. The phones were down, the power was down, but the bar was open and the hotel was providing a free buffet of cold cut sandwiches. About an hour later, hotel maintenance was able to rig up a generator that powered the bar television and we got our first look at the damage in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. Later in the night power was restored to the hotel.
A day or two later, when the airports opened, our company flew us home.
Several weeks later, one of the ladies I was traveling with, got a call at her desk. It was the owner of the shoe store. My coworker called me and our other coworker over, then put the owner on her desk speaker phone. The store owner told both ladies that instead of asking for a check, he wanted to let them know he’d framed the notes and hung them behind the cash register. He’d done this because he couldn’t believe someone would do what we did and it gave him hope.
We asked if the store had been looted further, he told us that the San Jose Police had locked the area down shortly after we’d been there so all of the local shop owners had suffered only minimal losses.
The lesson I learned is that taking something because you need it, and only taking what you need is very different from ransacking and cleaning out a place because you want a bunch of stuff.
According to the letter of the law we were looters. We could have been arrested and charged. We could have been shot and no-one would have thought anything about it.
Flash forward to this time in our history and I’d no more think of doing what we did than think I could fly.
There’s something different in our country today. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like there’s an overwhelming greed coupled with entitlement.
Now days looting is synonymous with stealing stupid stuff and stealing everything from a store. I guess looting has always been synonymous with these things. People don’t understand that just because something is “insured” doesn’t mean there’s no price.
I have a very different view of a mother stealing a can of baby formula or a loaf of bread and can of tuna, than I do people raiding a Best Buy. Yeah you stole a 65” flatscreen but it’s not going to do you any good with the power out. The mother on the other hand is obviously feeding her children.
So you cleaned out a Coach store and stole 50 handbags but what good are they?
I was thinking about these things in the wake of hurricane Ian.
There are reports of looting in some areas of Florida. The problem is people looting a grocery store to feed hungry children are treated the same as the assholes who clean out a Best Buy. Someone taking one pair of sneakers is treated the same as someone taking 50 pairs.
These are not the same thing. In the moment though, police aren’t going to be able to differentiate the person who’s a criminal out of necessity and the asshole criminal who’s in it due to opportunity, and for greed.
I’d bet that most grocers would hand a mother a can of formula, a loaf of bread and can of tuna and not think about it. That’s serving the community. The grocer would probably be happy to pass out one or two items each, to folks who were orderly and asked nicely.
But when a mob of people breaks in after a disaster, taking entire cases of stuff for themselves with no intention to share, that’s morally wrong and speaks to a selfishness and greed that’s detrimental to the community.
For me personally I always thought there was shared moral code all Americans understood. An almost absolute definition of right and wrong. The past few years have made me question that belief.
I find myself asking what has happened to the country I grew up in. What happened to feeling like you could trust the intentions of others and take their stories at face value? When did we forget that lying is wrong?
I used to stop and help stranded motorists, I used to pick up hitchhikers, I used to buy meals for homeless people or folks that were down on their luck. Now I do none of that. It’s not because I don’t care, it’s because I can no longer tell if someone is really in need, or if someone is trying to play me.
When did we lose our way?
A more important question is, “Can we find our way back?”
I know that looting is going to become a problem in the coming days across Florida. I just hope that the police and everyone else is mindful that, some people are taking only what they need to survive or feed their children, and aren’t too quick to judge.