Legitimate Voyeurism

As a kid I remember my mom would pick up the phone and call to alert her best friend Peggy or vice versa when one of them heard the ear splitting screams of an emergency vehicle. Sometimes I'd go along with Mom. We'd wait at the window until we'd see Peggy's gray Suburban pull up in the driveway. We'd hop in and race through the streets with the windows down smelling for smoke, straining our ears for sirens, and keeping a general lookout for carnage. It was a bored housewives' pastime and provided a cheap rush of adrenaline at someone else's tragic expense. I always thought it was fun but I've never found myself bored enough as an adult to engage in an activity that feels a little dirty and reeks of voyeurism.

Jeff's job as an insurance adjuster gives him the legitimacy to be behind the yellow tape of tragedy that Mom and Peggy never had. So in a way, I still get to follow the sirens but I do it vicariously through Jeff's work assignments. The fire he went to in West Covina on Sunday was particularly horrifying and thrilling. Two hooded men tore through the neighborhood at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning and threw a Molotov cocktail bomb through the bathroom window of the home that was Jeff's later claim. The homeowner was asleep but managed to escape with his 93 year-old father, his daughter, and one of the dogs. The wife and other daughter were not home. Jeff and a co-worker had the unfortunate experience of finding the charred poodle while they were taking some measurements. At first they thought it was a teddy bear but upon closer examination they were able to ascertain it was a poodle's corpse. The homeowner did not want to tell his daughters that the poodle was dead and even planned to buy a new one so they wouldn't find out. In the meantime, the girls were out in the street calling for the dog and posting fliers around the neighborhood.

Click on the links below to read the full story and to see a picture of Jeff at work.

http://sgvtribune.mycapture.com/mycapture/enlarge.asp?image=22423840&event=698039&CategoryID=33028

http://www.sgvtribune.com/ci_11770755