That One Time SWAT Took Over My Neighbor's House

Once upon a time, I was in the beginning stages of working on my house, and a woman appeared in my doorway. It was about 9pm, pitch black out, and my brother and I had the door open because it was really hot. Out of nowhere, a voice, said, “I thought I should come introduce myself…” and scared the crap out of me and my brother. When we looked up, a woman sporting a mumu, long gray hair, and a pack of cigs was standing in my doorway.

“I’m Stacy. I live across the street.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, waiting for my reply. “Oh. Hello. I’m Kelsey, and this is my brother, Cameron. He’s helping me work on the place.” “Ah, yeah, you’re the one that got snippy with me the other day.” She took another drag and stared at my brother. “Uh…oh…I’m sorry if you took it that way. We were just in a high stress situation, I wasn’t trying to be snippy.” A couple days before I had called my brother to come help me move Bob’s stuff out of my backyard. He parked facing the wrong way in front of Stacy’s house for like 5 minutes, and when he went to leave, she yelled from the porch that he was lucky he didn’t get a ticket for parking like that “cause the cops just went by, and they usually ticket for that sort of thing.” My brother’s retort, “Yeah, well that’s too bad because I wish they would have come by. We’ve been trying to get them over here to help with a situation for a while. Have a good night.” And he got in his car and drove away.

Stacy said, “Oh, yeah, the Bob thing? We’ve all been trying to be rid of him for a while now. He almost ran over my husband once. He passed away a few months ago. Not from Bob, at work. I haven’t been sleeping since then, so I always keep an eye on your place. There was a truck out here at 2am a couple nights ago so I called the cops for ya. I’m always watching.”

I wasn’t sure whether to feel grateful or creeped out.

“You need to be sure to watch out for that woman with a baby too!” “Um…I’m sorry?” “Yeah, the woman in the house next to me there, with a baby. Watch out for her.” “Oh…I haven’t seen her around.” “Yeah, well she’s crazy. The other night she came over to my house in the middle of the night, banging on the door…and she tried to kiss me! And I’m not like that, so I had to get in a fist fight with her in the front yard until the cops came and broke it up.” “Oh my.” “Yeah! I just kept thinking, ‘Where’s that baby?!’ ya know?” “Sure.” “Ok, well just keep an eye out.” and she shuffled back across the street.

Months later, my first official night sleeping in my house, Stacy knocked on my back door. “Hey there, I brought you back your cookie plate.” It was the plate I took her cookies on at Christmas. It was now March. “I heard you fell off a ladder!” “…I did?” Genuinely confused I really took a moment to think if maybe I actually did fall off a ladder. “Yeah, you did. My son-in-law saw it. So I brought you these back patches,” and handed me the plate piled with 6 mentholated back patches. “They usually work best on the second or third day after the fall, that’s when the pain’s the worst.” “But I don’t think I fell off a ladder.” “Ok honey, well you have a good night. Feel better.”

I was pumped a few weeks later though when in my apparent old-ageness I pulled something in my neck just by existing and my first thought was, “Back patches!” and the sucker worked great.

Just a couple months later I was at my computer teaching my kiddos in China, and I saw a fire truck drive up. A few minutes later an ambulance arrived and then a cop. I was trying to focus on my hour and a half left of classes, but was also wanting to know what was going on as the neighbors started to congregate across the street. When I did finally finish my classes, I was surprised to see everyone still out, so I joined them.

“What’s going on?” “She died!” the neighbor directly across from me exclaimed. “We have this thing we do with our porch lights. We always turn them on at night so we know each other is ok. She didn’t turn it on two nights ago, but she had been with me earlier and said she felt bad and went to lay down so I thought she just fell asleep and didn’t turn it on, but then it wasn’t on again last night. I went first thing this morning to check and there was no answer, so I looked in the window and just saw her legs, so I called the cops. Sure enough, she was in there, just dead on the floor.”

I was really sad for Stacy, but the neighbors were worried that the house - recently bought by Stacy after renting for years - would go to her super awful only child. Apparently Stacy had made it clear she didn’t want anything to go to her daughter, but never changed her will to reflect that, so pretty soon her daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend, and what seemed like a thousand of his friends and family members moved in the house. But just as soon as I was starting to get a handle on who was who, they up and left and rented the house out to one of his friends, which brought on a whole new slew of randos.

There are always tons of vehicles there, but constantly changing. There’s even a giant orange food truck with “Shh…Say No More” scrawled across it that sits directly behind my driveway. When I took them a plate of Christmas cookies, the guy who answered apologized for all the vehicles - which are usually parked directly in front of my house - saying he owned a car lot. I still didn’t get it, but whatever.

Then about a week ago I was in my bedroom reading and I heard a weird cop siren, but didn’t think much of it. About an hour later I got a text from my neighbor, “What the hell is happening?” Confused, I walked to the front of my house and looked out the window. Staring back at me were what seemed like 15 policemen, most of them SWAT, in front of a giant mobile SWAT command center, in full gear. There were two large SUVs parked the wrong way in front of my house, one of them even blocking most of my driveway, and I could see the lights on the guns inside the house going by all the windows as they were searching the house. Shocked at this turn of events, I pulled up a chair, and literally sat and stared out my window for about 3 hours, just seeing if I could figure out what was going on.

They never turned the lights on in the house, but the flashlights were roaming without ceasing. Random people would pull up and then leave just as suddenly, and someone came to get the 3 kids who were apparently home when whatever was going down, went down. Tons of photos were taken of the house, the vehicles - especially the food truck - and the detached garage. I eventually had to go to bed, but everyone was still out there. It was surreal.

I found out a few days later that it was a big drug bust, and the mom and dad of the kids were both arrested, though the mom was released later. Everything seems back to normal over there, though the food truck is still missing - not that I’m too sad about that.

It was funny because during the drug bust, I was texting two of my neighbors as we were all trying to figure out what was going on, and they both made comments about how they couldn’t believe this was happening on our “quiet” and “safe little street.” A convicted felon meth-addict living in my backyard, a stalker next door to me who still can be heard screaming every now and then, and fist fights in front yards…I wonder what a not quiet street would be like to them… All just part of the color that attracted me here in the first place though, I suppose. Never a dull moment to be sure!