Sunday, April 27, 2008
Sports, "Hunt's Grunts"
Stealing and Healing
Where's Miranda?
CREDIT: Hunt Archbold
Miranda with good friend Eddie
By Hunt Archbold
I remember the last time I flat-out stole something. It was a stormy late summer’s night in 1990, the location the original and now closed Jocks & Jills on 10th Street, the item a framed picture of former Falcon running back William Andrews. It was a brazen and stupid act, but a successful one: I ripped the picture off the wall above the bar, eluding the manager’s grasp as I sailed down those steep wooden stairs to the back door and into the parking lot. I didn’t have to run far, partly because management probably didn’t care that much about the picture, and also because it was absolutely pouring down rain, and who wants to go chasing after an inebriated idiot in the middle of a thunderstorm?
Thoroughly soaked, I looked down at the colored shot of Andrews cutting back across the grain on the Atlanta-Fulton County turf circa 1982, and it struck me. I remember thinking how what I had done was wrong, that this wouldn’t be the kind of thing Andrews would stand for, and that I should immediately return the picture. I wasn’t entirely correct in my thinking, but I did return to the scene of the crime, where a shocked manager could only verbally scold me and issue me a “lifetime ban’’ from the premises (as if that was going to happen). That Andrews photo remained in its nestled spot above the bar until the venue’s closing a few months back.
No, I was wrong about Andrews. In his prime, before a knee injury cut short a fine career, he was one of the NFL’s best all-around backs. But on that fall Sunday in 2004 when Andrews was being inducted as part of the initial class of the Falcons’ “Ring of Honor,’’ he was not at the Georgia Dome to hear the cheers of his many fans. Instead, he was sitting quietly in a DeKalb County jail. Later, he would serve more than a year’s time as part of pleading no contest to a charge of theft by taking. People steal, even sports heroes. But since that night in midtown, I have not knowingly or purposely taken someone else’s property.
On the other hand, I have been burglarized at least a dozen times since, sometimes due in part to my failings, such as leaving doors unlocked or valuables unattended. But always because someone else, maybe out of desperation due to real-life circumstances, felt compelled to swipe something that wasn’t theirs to take. I’m certainly no saint, but stealing ain’t my bag, baby, and I’m not sure why it would be anyone else’s.
Just within the last couple of months, University of Virginia linebacker J’Courtney Williams was charged with credit card theft after stealing a fellow student’s wallet; two Santa Clara University water polo players were arrested for stealing iPods, laptops and credit cards from fellow students and trying to sell them on Craigslist; and University of Colorado linebacker Jake Duren was arrested on criminal trespass after authorities found him bleeding and passed out in the hallway of a residence hall. A trail of blood led directly to a smashed-in window in the parking lot.
In March, former boxer Reggie Johnson, who held the 1992-93 WBA middleweight championship belt and the 1998-99 IBA light heavyweight title, was arrested in Houston for stealing more than $120,000 raised to help fund camps for children displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In Minnesota in late February, former youth sports commissioner Douglas Jay Jahnke was charged with embezzling more than $43,000 from the Burnsville Athletic Club due to a gambling problem. Last month in Phoenix, three people were arrested in connection with an organized retail crime ring behind more than 100 thefts of sporting goods equipment, sports apparel and tools totaling more than $200,000.
Last month, former Atlanta Hawk Isaiah Rider was picked for driving a stolen car. Montreal Canadian defenseman Ryan O’Byrne, currently helping his team in the Stanley Cup conference semifinals, was charged in February with felony grand theft for stealing a woman’s purse. Three weeks ago in New Jersey, three thieves pulled off a heist at a sports superstore warehouse that involved kidnapping, armed robbery and theft of three trailers and merchandise.
Maybe it has a little to do with the morally challenged but widely popular video game Grand Theft Auto, the fourth installment of which will be released this Tuesday, but folks like to steal. And folks have stolen from me again. To the shock and dismay of many who have known her over time, my mannequin friend of 15 years, Miranda, was stolen from my vehicle last week in Buckhead. An organized campaign to orchestrate her return (still no ransom note) is already in full swing, and anyone with info can call confidentially and leave a recorded message 24/7 at 770-579-5175. I won’t go into great detail about Miranda’s existence and significance, as I already did in the March 9 issue of The Sunday Paper, but you’re more than welcome to check it out in the sports archives at www.sundaypaper.com.
But I will say this: There is a healing time I must endure, because I feel violated. I remember how I felt holding that framed Andrews picture nearly 18 summers ago; I remember thinking that I was better than that, and that this was a bad choice I was no longer going to make. I hope Miranda’s abductors might feel the same way.
Happy times … and yes, I left the back window halfway cracked. (Sigh.) SP