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A man approached me and my kids in a deserted mall parking lot at 10 at night and started talking to my kids and I could not get him to leave. This was last December. I was 9 months pregnant. I was Christmas shopping at the mall with my 7 year old and my 15 year old on a Saturday night, in a very safe city with a very low crime rate. There's an Applebee's connected to the mall, and we finished shopping late and the stores were starting to close, so I took the girls in there for a late dinner. We finished up around 10 and came out the Applebee's entrance into a practically deserted parking lot with all the shopping bags. As we got to the car I was moving bags around on my arms trying to find my keys, and a 50ish year old crusty looking guy started walking up from somewhere in the lot. Shaggy gray hair. Faded flannel shirt. Old jeans. I noticed him coming when he was about 40 feet away and he said "This is a stick up, give me all your money." My blood ran cold and I just stared at him and shakily said "..w...what..?" He said he was just kidding. Then he came up and stood right next to my daughters, who were on the other side of the car waiting for me to unlock it. And he started making small talk. With me and with my girls. Asking if they'd been good for Santa, how old they were, whether we got all our shopping done, what kind of things we got. He didn't seem drunk. He didn't seem high or slow or off in any way. He was completely coherent. So there I am. Heavily pregnant, alone with my 2 daughters in an empty lot at 10 at night, and a stranger has walked over and positioned himself right next to my kids on the far side of the car, hands in his pockets, shooting the breeze, glancing over his shoulder every so often. I didn't want to aggravate him. So I kept politely talking to him and tried to look calm and normal while my hands were going frantically through my purse for my keys. This went on for a couple of minutes. He kept looking back over his shoulder. I was silently panicking and trying to keep it from escalating by chatting with him like everything was fine, while I could not find my damn keys. They were in there hiding good. I felt like at any second he was going to pull a knife or a gun, and my kids were right next to him, away from me, on the other side of the car, and I couldn't find my keys to get them in. He kept trying to pull them into the conversation. My oldest was a little weirded out and kept glancing at me to see how I was reacting. Kids don't recognize danger when they're with a parent. They look at us and we're the proof that everything is fine. And I was doing such a good job staying calm that they had no idea what was happening. My 7 year old is outgoing. She was completely oblivious, because he was being friendly and because she was with mommy, so she was safe. So she started telling him what she picked out for Daddy for Christmas. Then she started asking him if he knew what Minecraft was. She was keeping him there. She was holding him in the conversation and she had no idea. I started trying to give him hints that we were done. "It was nice chatting with you, but I gotta get these kids to bed." "It was really nice meeting you." I had the girls say it was nice meeting him too. He sidestepped every one of them. Asked them what their favorite subjects at school were. Told them what nice young ladies they were. And I'm still standing there with bags on both arms digging through a giant cluttered purse. Then I got this sinking feeling, because I realized I might have left my keys inside the mall. And that we were stuck out there with a man who kept looking over his shoulder and was showing no sign of leaving. I remember thinking he was waiting for the right moment. That all he had to do was grab one of my girls and I would do anything he said. My heart was going so hard I could feel it in my throat. There was nobody else out there. No cars pulling in, no people. Just us. Then the Applebee's doors opened behind him and a group came out. Maybe 5 or 6 of them, loud, laughing about something. One of them looked over at us. He turned his head and looked at them, and then he looked back at me and went "Ok, it was nice talking with ya, see ya later." And he walked off in the same direction he came from. It wasn't until then that I found my keys. I unlocked the car and told the girls to get in fast, and I got in and locked the doors and started it and drove out of there. My 15 year old laughed and said "Ok, THAT was weird." I was so relieved I laughed too. We got home and my husband asked how shopping went and I said it went great, and my oldest told him about the guy in the parking lot and how weird it was, kind of joking about it. I started joking too. I told him I was having a full mental panic attack while trying to look normal. I made fun of myself for how I was trying to casually dig through my purse like a lunatic. My husband went completely white. My father in law is a retired sheriff's deputy, and my husband went through the police academy after high school before he went into business instead. So he knows things I don't know. He made me sit down and tell it again from the start. He told me he was 100% sure the reason that man was hanging around us chit chatting was that he was waiting for me to unlock my car. And the reason he was standing next to our kids was that once I unlocked it and the kids started to get inside, he was most likely going to force himself into the car with them and hold something to them to gain leverage on me. Because he knew I wouldn't abandon my kids, which would force me to get in with them and do whatever he wanted me to do. Which would most likely be to drive to a remote location. And he said the fact that he wasn't wearing a mask suggested his intention was to also leave no witnesses who could identify him. I sat there and I remembered that he had been standing by the back seat passenger door. Which is where my 7 year old was waiting to get in. Then my husband told me the last part, and it's still in my head 8 months later. He said the guy didn't get bored and wander off. He left the second those people came out of the restaurant and one of them looked over. He needed there to be nobody watching. And for about 2 minutes there was nobody watching, and then there was. I didn't sleep that night. I went up and stood in my 7 year old's doorway for a while. Then I came back down and sat at the table where he'd told me all of it. I've seen the stories. Everybody has. The parking lot footage that goes around every few months. The woman pulled into a van outside a store. The one where you can see the kid's backpack on the ground. I've watched them. I've sent them to people. And every single time I did the same thing with it. I filed it. Not because I didn't believe it. I believed all of it. It's just that when you watch something like that, it's happening somewhere. Some rough part of some city, 2 in the morning, some woman who was on her phone and not looking up. Not a mall. Not a Saturday. Not with the lights on and an Applebee's 60 feet behind me. Not me, in the town I moved to for the schools. I have never once watched one of those and thought that's me. Not one time in my life. It was always a woman on a screen in a place I don't go. And what my husband sat there and described was me. In my own car. With my own kids in the back seat. Driving. I was talking the whole time it was happening. Two full minutes of me talking. And it still ended when he decided it ended. Steph came over that Thursday. Our oldest girls were in preschool together so I've known her 12 years. She brought back a bag of my 15 year old's stuff that got left at her house after the sleepover. We stood at the counter going through the fall schedule and whether the new science teacher is as bad as everyone says. Her youngest has decided she's a vegetarian and made it 4 days. The kids went out in the yard. And I said "something happened at the mall last week." I told her all of it. The husband part too. She was quiet for a second. Then she asked me what I'd do if it happened again. And I sat there with my mouth open because I did not have an answer. I've thought about it every day since and I still don't. Same lot, same night, same man walking over. I would do the exact same thing I did, because there was nothing else to do. He wasn't scared of me. He was 6 foot something and I was 9 months pregnant. He was never scared of me for one second, and he was never going to be. That was never the thing that was going to get rid of him. He picked the lot. He picked 10 at night. He picked the woman with bags on both arms and her kids on the wrong side of the car. All of that is one thing. He needed it to not look like anything was happening yet. That's what the stick up joke was for. That's what the Santa questions were for. A man standing at a car talking to a family. That's all anybody driving past would have seen, and that is exactly what he was building. And then a door opened and 5 people came out laughing and one of them looked over. That's all that happened. Nobody confronted him. Nobody came over. Nobody helped. One person turned her head in our direction and he was gone in about 4 seconds. It wasn't a person that scared him off. It was being looked at. And I sat there at my counter working out that I had no way of making anybody look. There is nothing in a purse that turns a head from 100 feet away. There is nothing I can do standing at my own car in an empty lot that makes 5 people at a restaurant door stop and look over at me. I couldn't make that happen that night and I couldn't make it happen tomorrow. It happened to us by accident. Somebody wanted dessert. That's when Steph took her keys out of her bag and put them on the counter. There was a little white thing on the ring next to her car key. Two pieces clipped together, about the size of a key fob. I asked what it does. She said you pull the two halves apart. That's it. Then she said "come outside." We went out front. She stood in the middle of my driveway and told me not to watch her, watch the houses. I said watch the houses? She pulled it apart. I felt it before I understood what it was. It went through my chest. Not a beep, a siren, and a white strobe going off at the same time that I had to turn my face away from. My 7 year old was in the yard and dropped into a crouch with her hands over her ears. My 15 year old came around the side of the house yelling something at us and I could not hear one word of it. I could only see her mouth moving. Steph just stood there holding it out at arm's length, completely calm, watching the street. The man across the road came out onto his lawn. Steph clicked the two halves back together and it stopped and my ears were ringing in the quiet. She shouted over that we were sorry, we were testing something. He shouted back "yeah, that'll work." She said it's 130 decibels, which means nothing to anybody, so think of an ambulance going past a foot from your head except it doesn't go past. You can hear it 2 blocks away. Halves go back together, it's ready again. Charges with a cable. Legal everywhere. I stood on my own driveway and thought about how long it had taken. About 6 seconds, on a normal Thursday afternoon on a street where nothing happens, for a grown man to put down what he was doing and walk out onto his own grass to look. That is what I could not do in that parking lot. Not one thing I was carrying could make a man on the other side of a road do that. I keep going back to him standing at my back passenger door with his hands in his pockets, looking over his shoulder every 20 seconds. He was checking. The entire time, he was checking whether anybody was coming out of that restaurant. He got to decide how long that lasted. I didn't. I could have ended it from where I was standing. Bags on both arms, no keys in my hand, my kids on the far side of the car, 40 feet between us. And he stops being a man having a nice conversation with a family. He's a man standing next to a siren and a strobe in an empty parking lot with every window and every door in the place pointed at him. Nobody has to come. Nobody has to help. That is not what moved him the first time either. He only has to be looked at. I ordered them that night. The brand Steph has is SheSafe. I read the reviews for about an hour first. A few of them stuck with me. "I bought these for my teen daughters and tested one before wrapping them. The alarm is so loud my ears were ringing and the strobe lit up the entire room. As a mom it's hard to protect your girls when they're out in the world without you. This is the closest thing to being there when I can't be." "My daughter leaves for college next month and I was losing sleep thinking about her walking across campus at night. The alarm is so loud that when we tested it in the driveway our neighbors came outside." "I tested this in my apartment and my neighbor knocked on the door to ask if everything was okay. That told me everything I needed to know." "I clip this to my keys and it goes everywhere with me. Grocery store parking lot at night, the gym at 5am, walking the dog after sunset. Now I feel calm because I know one pull and every head within earshot turns my way." "After I got mine I couldn't stop thinking about the women in my life who don't have one. I bought them for my daughter, my niece, my sister and my Mom. I sleep better at night knowing every woman I love has one on her keys." I got 4. One for me, one for my 15 year old's backpack, one clipped to my 7 year old's, and one for the house. My oldest rolled her eyes so hard I thought she'd hurt herself. It has been on her bag every day since. I've used it once. June, the gas station off the highway, about 8 at night. My 15 year old was at a friend's, so it was just me and the 7 year old. I was at the pump with my back to the car. And I heard my daughter scream. I have never moved like that in my life. I turned around and there was a man at her window. Right at it, one hand on the glass, leaning down and looking in at her. I didn't decide anything. My hand was already on my keys because they were in my hand, and I pulled it apart. The whole forecourt went white. He came up off the car and turned around and we made eye contact for about a second, and then he ran. Not walked. Ran, across the lot and out onto the access road. The guy behind the counter came out to the door. Two people at the other pumps were looking over. Nobody called anybody. Nobody came running. It didn't matter. He was gone before I got the two halves back together. My daughter was fine. She was crying and shaking and she is fine. Nothing about my life changed. I still go to that mall. I still park in that lot. I still come out of there at 10 at night with too many bags. What changed is what's in my hand when I walk out. I don't dig anymore. It's on the outside of my bag with my keys, and it's in my hand from the store door to the car door, every single time, and my hand is closed around it before I'm off the sidewalk. I think about that man more than I want to. Not what he was going to do. My husband already told me that and I don't need to go back there. I think about the fact that he was the one who decided when it ended. For 2 minutes, in a parking lot 15 minutes from my house, with my 2 daughters standing next to him and me on the other side of the car, it was entirely up to him. And the only reason it stopped is that some people finished dinner. You're going to see him coming. That part works. Every woman I know sees him coming. The question is whether you can do anything about it while he's still 40 feet away, or whether you stand there like I did and wait for a door to open. Get one for yourself. Get one for your kids' backpacks. Get one for your mom, your sister, the friend who closes on Fridays and walks out to the far end of the lot on her own. Or don't, and hope somebody comes out of a restaurant. You choose. Thank you for reading this far. I hope something in it was useful to you. I know some of you are reading this in a parking lot right now, waiting for somebody, with the doors locked. Kara P.S. I want to come back to the thing my husband said, because it changed how I think about all of it. That man was not afraid of me. He was 6 foot something. I was 9 months pregnant with bags hanging off both arms. He was never going to be afraid of me and we both knew it standing there. He was afraid of one thing. Being seen doing it. That is why he picked a lot with nobody in it. That is why he picked 10 at night. That is why he opened with a joke instead of a threat. That is why he stood at my car talking about Santa with his hands in his pockets, looking over his shoulder every 20 seconds. Every second of those 2 minutes was him keeping it looking like nothing was happening. And the second it stopped looking like nothing, he left. He didn't think about it. He was gone in 4 seconds. You are not going to overpower him. I couldn't have on the best day of my life. You don't have to. You have to make people look. https://www.tryshesafe.com/products/shesafe P.P.S. You pull the two halves apart. That's the whole thing. One hand. One motion. You don't have to look down at it. Nothing to unlock. Nothing to aim. Nothing to get the cap off first. A siren and a strobe light, both at the same second, and it does not stop until you put the two halves back together. There is a ring on the top. It goes on your keys, or on the strap of your bag, on the outside. Not inside the bag. Every useful thing I own is at the bottom of that purse. That is how I lost my keys standing 4 feet from a man who was waiting for me to find them. Mine is on my keyring. It has been there since February and I have not had to think about it once. P.P.P.S. Order it tonight. I nearly didn't. I nearly went up to bed and told myself I'd do it in the morning. I know how that goes. You mean it on a Thursday, and then it's the weekend, and somebody has a game, and then it's a month later. And nothing has happened in that month, so it slides down the list. Nothing had happened to me either. Not once in 41 years. 41 years of nothing, and then 2 minutes at the end of an ordinary Saturday. There was no warning. That is the entire design of a man like that. He does not tell you which night it is. P.P.P.P.S. The guarantee, in case you skimmed. 365 days. A full year. Any reason at all, including changing your mind. If it doesn't make you feel safer every time you walk out of your house, you send it back and they refund you. You don't have to have used it. You don't have to prove anything to anybody. You don't have to explain yourself to a single person. If you're not satisfied, you're not satisfied. That's the whole policy. P.P.P.P.P.S. The thing I keep coming back to is that Steph never explained it to me. She stood in the middle of my driveway and told me not to watch her, to watch the houses. Then she pulled it apart. About 6 seconds. A Thursday afternoon on a street where nothing ever happens. A man walked out onto his own lawn to see what was going on. That was the answer to the thing I had been sitting up at night with, and she never had to say one word of it out loud. I've done it for 2 people since. My sister in law, in her own driveway, with her kids watching from the step. And a woman from my daughter's school who I hardly know at all, who told me in the pickup line that a man had followed her out of the gym parking lot in May. You don't forget what it sounds like. And you don't forget your neighbor coming outside. K https://www.tryshesafe.com/products/shesafe