Guest Post
Norma Rowe
After I heard the voice telling me to leave the vault and go into the bank lobby with the robber, I went. He had demanded that two girls go, but I was the only one who did. He didn’t ask for another one. He, instead, came with me to the teller window and told me to put money in bags. Even though he kept telling me to hurry up, I carefully included the “bait” money (marked bills). At one point I saw a small red light flashing, which indicated that the alarm had been activated. I remembered what he had said about blowing someone’s head off, so I tried to conceal the light. I failed, but fortunately he didn’t see me or the light. I then came to the vault-teller’s box, a large one, which required two different keys. I couldn’t open that one, and by then he was making me very nervous so I called to the Operations Officer to come out from the vault and open it for me. He grudgingly came and got it open but now he had to join us in filling the bags. I was toward the front of the building when I glanced up to see a police officer looking in the window. He was wearing a motorcycle helmet. Oh, good, I thought. The police are here so now we are safe.
I looked back at the thief and at that very instant he was firing at the officer. Up until that moment I had thought that maybe the gun wasn’t loaded but when I saw a flare come from the weapon, the hope of an unloaded gun vanished! My first instinct was to run toward the police officer, so I could be out of danger, but I discarded that idea thinking the guy could easily shoot me in the back. I couldn’t stay where I was, in the middle of gunfire, but if I ran toward the back of the building to join the others I had to pass him and he could easily grab me to use as a hostage. Again, something inside of me was assuring me that I could run by him and he wouldn’t grab me. I did.
As I ran back, the O.O. who had ducked behind a desk, kept yelling, “Get down, get down!” I finally ducked behind another desk but he said, “not there, here.” He wanted me where he was because it was closer to the vault, but once I hit the floor I couldn’t stand on my own two feet again. It was like that “shield,” that “armor” I had felt before, had lifted, so he stretched out his arm and I stretched out mine and he grabbed my hand and pulled me across the floor and we got on our feet to run into the vault to barricade ourselves but my legs wouldn’t support me. I was nicknamed “rubber legs” after that. One of our customers, a retired bank manager, saw what was happening and came out and helped the O. O. lift me off the floor and drag me into the vault with them. We closed the door, and barricaded it with a metal cabinet nearby.
Old Things R New 