It was one year ago yesterday that we had the most frightening experience in our lives as fulltime RVers. Longtime readers may remember that it was on December 4, 2009 that we returned to our Winnebago, which was parked in the campground at an RV repair facility in Elkhart, Indiana, and came face to face with an armed burglar inside our motorhome.

By the time I realized what was happening, I was already out of our van and approaching the door of the RV, and he was pointing a gun at me. In the confrontation that followed, I managed to slam the RV’s door on his hand and disarmed the intruder. He got away, only to show up at a hospital three days later with seven broken bones in his wrist and hand.

As it turned out, he was a career criminal out on bail on other charges, and with outstanding warrants. He’s back in prison where he belongs, and will be for a long time, or until the next parole board believes his sob story about how he grew up poor and was victimized by life and the system.

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Besides some things that were missing, the intruder and whoever had been with him trashed the inside of our RV, throwing electronic components on the floor and stomping on them, slashing furniture, and ripping down window blinds.

A frustrating battle with our insurance company followed, but we finally prevailed, and were able to put our motorhome and our lives back together. Living well really is the best revenge.

What a difference a year makes! Back then, we spent the next week freezing our butts off in Indiana while repairs were made to our RV so we could leave. Now we’re in Florida, where a cold front is coming through, and temperatures are predicted to dip as low as 29 degrees in the next few days. So yes, we’ll be freezing our butts off again, but if that’s the worst that can happen, we can deal with it.

Our lives have gone on, and while we have put the burglary behind us, we still feel violated, and disgusted with a system that had let the creep out of prison early so he could prey on us and others. We don’t fear traveling in our RV, and we still dry camp frequently. Inside our motorhome, we feel secure, but Terry and I are both a little apprehensive when we return to our coach after dark, unless we’re parked in a campground we know.

We had a motion detector light installed at our door, and while we refuse to live in fear, we are not nearly as complacent as we had become. We realize that while what happened to us can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time, the odds against the average RVer ever having such an experience are very, very slim.  We still feel that this is the greatest lifestyle in the world, and every new day is an adventure, whether we’re camping in the desert of Arizona and listening to the coyotes singing us to sleep, or parked under a palm tree in Florida enjoying a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

Thought For The Day – If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics are all wrong.

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Terry and I both want to thank all of you who posted comments on the blog, e-mailed, or called us after reading about our encounter with an armed burglar in our RV. Your concern and support are very much appreciated.

We are okay, but both of us feel totally wiped out, I think myself more than Miss Terry. I have always been able to function during a crisis or emergency situation, but like this time, a day or so later it all hits me at once, leaving me feeling shaky, wrung out, and feeling like I am teetering on a ledge.

I only slept an hour or so Friday night, and ever since the incident, I have been going over it in my head, second guessing myself, and wondering what I could have/should have done differently. Looking back, I keep thinking that the second I realized that we had been victimized, we should have backed off and avoided the potential confrontation that followed. And I keep thinking what could have happened to Terry if he had shot me and she was left alone with him. I am mentally kicking myself over and over again for putting her into that situation. That is the worst part, the what ifs.

Rationally, I know it all happened too fast for me to have had time to think it all through and consider my options, and that I reacted the way my instincts and training told me to do. And it worked out; nobody got hurt (except maybe the intruder’s arm), and we are here to tell the story. But again, there is that nagging “what if.”

Somebody wrote to say that this could have been avoided if we had been in a campground, instead of dry camping in a parking lot. But there are no campgrounds open where we are this time of year. And while we have dry camped in everything from truck stops to rest areas, to the open desert with no problems, this was an RV repair facility’s RV parking area with hookups. The only other time we had a crime issue was in our first month on the road, when somebody tried to steal our pickup truck while were in a Coast to Coast campground in California. So much for the argument of campgrounds over other locations to spend the night.

I also had several people tell me that they would have shot the burglar and worried about whatever happened later. With all due respect, that sounds a lot better in talk than in real life. Once you pull that trigger, you can’t take that bullet back. The legal and civil ramifications that will follow will cost you much more than whatever they may have stolen, not to mention the psychological aftermath.

Taking another person’s life is about the worst experience one can ever have, no matter what the circumstances. You will relive it for the rest of your life, trust me on this one. I’ve been there and still wake up too many nights in a cold sweat.  Would I have shot the guy if he continued to be a threat to our lives? In a nanosecond. Would I regret it forever after? Yes, I would. I’m just very grateful it didn’t come to that.

On another note, our faithful old MCI bus conversion is on its way to California with its new owner, Rich Perry. Rich and his friend  Bill flew in Friday, spent most of yesterday going over the bus from stem to stern, and left about 4:30 yesterday afternoon.

Here is a picture of myself and Rich shaking hands on the deal, while Bill and Miss Terry stand beside us.

Bill has an MCI 7 of his own, and has converted several buses for friends, so I feel confident that he’ll help Rich get our beloved bus to its new home. It was really sad to see her driving away for the last time, but as the old verse says, “to everything, there is a season…”

Before all of this started with the burglary, we had planned to leave Elkhart as soon as the bus sale was wrapped up. Now I’m not sure what will happen. I have an appointment at the VA hospital in Lexington, Kentucky on Wednesday morning, and trying to cancel and reschedule it would be a real hassle. But we may have no other choice. We obviously need to spend some more time inside a repair shop before we can go anywhere. 

Thought For The Day – It is not what you are called, but what you answer to that matters.

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For the most part the RV lifestyle is extremely safe, especially in terms of personal safety. I have always told new RVers that they have more to fear from an RV fire, or the idiot coming at them at 60 miles an hour riding three tons of steel, than they do from a criminal. An incident last night has proven to me just how wrong I have been.

We have been parked at an RV repair facility in Elkhart, Indiana having some repairs and upgrades done to our motorhome. Yesterday afternoon we picked up the fellow who flew in from California to buy our bus, and a friend who came to help him drive it back, at the airport in South Bend.

By the time we drove back to Elkhart, showed them the bus, got them checked into a hotel, and took them to dinner, it was almost 9 p.m. when we drove back to the repair shop, where our motorhome was parked in their small camping area. It’s a pretty dark place, and ours was the only occupied RV there. As we arrived, Terry said “Someone broke into our rig!” Sure enough, there was a softball sized hole in the door window. As I got out of the van and went up to the RV, Terry yelled “He’s still inside!” and I found myself face to face with a husky young black man coming out the door.

Now, I have been in the military, saw combat, I was a firearms instructor, have owned and carried a handgun most of my adult life, and have concealed weapons permits from two different states. But this lifestyle has made me complacent, and I seldom carry on a regular basis. And, when going to an airport, that is a big No No. So I wasn’t armed.

Our burglar, on the other hand, was armed with one of my own handguns, and as I yelled at him to show me his hands, he raised one of my Glock 9mm pistols toward us. The smart thing to do when we first spotted the broken window was to back off and call the police, but this all happened in a matter of seconds.

When I saw the gun in his hand, my only thought was to keep him from using it, so I slammed the door shut on his hand, with him inside the RV and me outside, and then slammed it a second (and maybe third time), shattering the rest of the glass in the door. He dropped the gun, then ran past me to get away as I recovered the weapon. My first thought was to shoot him as he fled, but I’m not going to kill anybody for a few material possessions, and the threat to us was over.

Meanwhile, Terry was in the van and on the phone talking to the 911 operator, and I stayed outside, because I didn’t know if there was anybody else inside the RV, and I have other firearms on board. Terry handed the phone out the window to me because the operator wanted to talk to me, and about then I saw the same guy poking his head around the corner of the building. Not knowing if he was armed, I pointed my pistol at him and told him if he took one step toward us I was going to kill him. Fortunately for both of us, he backed off and ran away.

The police used a dog to track him from the RV around the building to where he came back, and then off to a service road, where the scent disappeared. He must have had an accomplice who fled when we pulled into the parking lot, because he appeared empty handed when he ran, but we are missing a flat screen LCD TV, netbook computer, my Seiko wristwatch, the cable for my Silverleaf engine monitor (which was plugged into the computer), and we won’t know what else until we take a total inventory.

Inside, the motorhome, there was a big pile of things in the entryway, including a couple of handguns, our Wii, DVD player, digital SLR camera and other stuff he had ready to take when we interrupted him.

He, or they, also trashed our RV. There is broken glass everywhere, they cut a big triangle into the driver’s seat and pulled out part of the stuffing, ripped down the day/night shades in the bedroom, and threw stuff everywhere as they ransacked the place. The police dusted for fingerprints, and left a mess of stubborn black powder that is almost impossible to clean up.

But at least nobody got hurt. We are shaken, we feel totally violated, and I’m pissed off, both at the thief or thieves, and at myself. If they had to steal something because they are too damned lazy to work, okay, do it. But why vandalize our home in the process?

As for myself, I have become complacent in this lifestyle, and I let my guard down. Getting ripped off is one thing; almost getting shot with my own gun is unacceptable. You can bet that the next time I leave my motorhome, I’ll have more than my empty hand to point at whomever might be waiting for me when I come back home!

With the window busted out and temperatures down in the 20s overnight, there was no way we could stay there, and we were not about to anyway, in case they came back. I called our friend Michele Henry from Phoenix Commercial Paint and explained our plight, and even though it was late at night, Michele came back to the shop and opened it up so we could pull the motorhome inside and stay out of the worst of the weather until we can start dealing with things Monday morning. In the meantime, we are safe, and just coming down off the adrenalin high the incident gave us.

Thought For The Day – Count not what is lost, but what is left.

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