One Year ago today

Sunday, November 21, 2010: One Year ago today, my husband was robbed at gunpoint.
{Refer back a year ago to my post NCIS On The Real}

It is crazy to me to think about the time of which has passed. It still seems like a dream and it still seems as if it had recently happened. I'm sure I probably think about it more than my husband, and he was the one who was robbed.

In this crazy world, there was one place I saw as "safe" and that was the base. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine two men would approach my husband with a shotgun, point it at him and force him to the ground. "Not on base, that's just not possible". But it is possible. And it wasn't the first time something similar had happened on base.

Even now, I find that my husband is still uneasy. He's more aware of his surroundings. The rifle stays loaded by our bed, ADT was installed in our house, he parks under street lights or in the sights of other people. That day those two men made off with more than $500, but more than that.. they took our security.

For several weeks, NCIS would question my husband about the men and that morning. They questioned me, they questioned Sailor's on different ships. Eventually, they stopped calling, and they stopped giving us updates.  To this day, as far as my husband and I know, those two men were never arrested, nor charged. We don't have the slightest clue who the men could be.

It seems the leads NCIS had couldn't take them anywhere. Too many things happened that day for the robbery to not have been a planned event. First things, one of the gate security cameras- the gate my husband would use every day, cut off just before my husband's typical time of going through it, and back on some time later that morning. Base police did not lock down the parking lot where the Robbery had taken place nor did they put the base on lock down- if they had, the guys would have been caught because they were hitting up the ATM in the parking lot attached to the parking lot of which my husband was robbed. The camera issues as well as Base police not doing locking down base, was suspicious to the NCIS agents. Base police didn't do their job.

NCIS was frustrated with how poorly base police responded, as were my husband and myself.

The guys were smart to cover their faces for the ATM cameras, however, they left their arms exposed. One of the guys had a couple tattoos, but they didn't lead NCIS anywhere.

After they hit up the ATM on base, they made 2 more attempts that day to withdraw money. Again the next day, they tried again. But there was always an issue it seemed. One of the bank's cameras was not working properly and the other, they were having issues getting the tapes from them. That's as far as we heard about anything there.

NCIS told us they wouldn't give up and that my husband's case was one of 7 or 8 cases (at the time) that year sent to the Pentagon. That gave us reason to believe the bastards would be caught. I wish they had kept in contact, I wish we had called them more often to see if there was any more leads.

The robbery had a huge impact on my husband. People would pick on him for it- trying to make light of it all. He would do the same, but on the inside, it ate at him. It became a struggle for us, he didn't know how to handle his emotions and would cause him to anger easily. It took the last underway before he left for deployment for him to see the affect it really had on him and us. He was suffering for PTSD, and was blind to it- as most are. PTSD is always associated with deployment, with war.. but there are so many other things that can lead to it. The robbery being my husband's. When he realized what was happening to him, he got help. He sought out guidance from one of the ship's chaplains.

The speculations of what happened or what didn't happen were crazy. I have no idea how people can come up with such crazy rumors. I've heard that my husband made it up. Some said my husband was robbed for a GPS (we don't own a GPS aside from navigation on our phones). I had people messaging, calling and telling me "sorry for your loss", thinking my husband was dead. People thought my husband was shot... etc. It was pure chaos. 

Truth is, My husband was reaching in his car for his Parka. He heard the cock of a shot gun and then, "Get on the ground!". He honestly thought it was one of his buddies pulling a prank on him. He turned around to a shotgun at his face. They forced him to the ground and took his debit card from his wallet. They demanded the pin, and when you have a shotgun to your head, you don't have time to think of a wrong pin. The gunmen then ran off, my husband jumped in his car and pulled in officer's parking by the pier and called base police, then called me to cancel his card, but they had already took the money by that time.

I'm thankful we are able to move forward from a year ago. I'm thankful for the support we received from many people after that day. My blog fans, our friends, and surrounding ship's Sailors. Even in such a upsetting situation, there's always a positive ending- Life, love and friendship.