How It Went Down

    Now it can be told. It was Wednesday afternoon,  June 12, 2019. I received a call from R. saying Joe M. was at SnS, grocery shopping, and had locked his car keys in his vehicle. After he finished shopping, he would call R. who was to call me. Meanwhile, I was on standby.
    I figured by then, after he had finished shopping, he would then have groceries in his cart to contend with in addition to his being locked out of his car.  So I decided to drive to Schaghticoke to assess the situation. I armed myself with a coat hanger, though I realize most door locks no longer lend themselves to that type of manipulation. But I went old-school anyway.
  Joe would have been inside the store, shopping, but I easily found his vehicle and noticed that the driver-side front window was rolled down several inches. I looked in and saw the keys located in the drink cup between the front seats.
     I straightened out the coat hanger and reached in as far as I could, and succeeded in inserting the hook of the hanger into the keyring. I tried to lift it up and out, but the keyring slid off the hanger and deeper into the cup hole. It was just out of my reach. I went into the store to locate Joe, who was just approaching the checkout, to apprise him of my efforts. He thought that maybe he would be able to reach the keys through the partly opened window, though I had my doubts.
    He has Roadside Assistance, which could have come to his aid, but we didn't mind continuing efforts ourselves. The day was bright and sunny, and in probably  about half an hour, I had the door unlocked. The car alarm sounded.  I went into the store and told Joe, who said that would stop when he put the key in the ignition, and it did.We loaded the groceries into his car, and he was preparing to drive home. I was walking over to where my car was parked when the Sheriff's car pulled up in front of me, and two deputies got out and started walking toward me.   I assumed they might have been responding to the now-silenced car alarm. I told them the problem was resolved, that the locked car had been opened. No problem, guys. But, as it turned out, that is not why they were here.
     One of them told me they had received a call, from inside SnS, that a woman wearing a pink shirt was trying to break into a car in their parking lot. ( I felt like saying that my shirt was rust-colored, not pink, a color I don't wear, but figured that would not help, that the less said, the better.)  Anyway, there was a peaceful resolution, with one deputy expressing admiration for the act of opening the door, saying he himself had tried unsuccessfully with his wife's car. Again, I did not go into details as to how the process unfolded.
     They completed their investigation by asking me where my car was, as Joe was driving away. I pointed my car out, an easy thing to do as that's where I was headed before they interrupted me. Their final words to me were:  "When we get a call, we have to come." 
    As to what idiot had called the police to make the report, I guess I'll never know. Someone into the motto of see something, say something, most likely. But what about trying to help an old woman who was apparently locked out of her vehicle, you jerk.