I'm not sure if this is acceptable to point in Information Wars but seeing as how almost nobody participates in this group anymore, perhaps the mods will allow something that isn't exactly political or whatever the heck we are meant to do in here.
This is a story about community, and how a group of very different people can come together to help someone out in a time of need despite us all coming from very different backgrounds, upbringings, as well as races and religions.
Ms Nancy
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I would have been around 17 or 18 years old when i met Ms. Nancy and I was doing a part time job at a place that probably doesn't exist anymore but was wildly popular in the 80's and 90's called "Pizza Inn."
Pizza Inn wasn't really a competitor to anyone and the only reason why anyone went there was because they had an all you can eat pizza, pasta, and salad buffet that was something extremely cheap like $2.99 per person including all you can drink soda pop. It was a high-turnover, very low quality food sort of establishment and it didn't take much in the way of skills to work there. Every sort of plate or cup was made of plastic and it was nigh on impossible to break this stuff.
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The job requirements were pretty simple here: Be willing to work for around $5 an hour and don't turn up late too often. That was basically it.
Ms. Nancy was likely in her 70's when she was washing dishes along with a bunch of teenagers and Ms. Nancy didn't need to work, she didn't need the money as she had a pension and an income from her deceased husband. She chose to work because she was bored at home all day and would do a partial shift for something like 4 hours. Not a great deal was expected of Ms. Nancy but it's not like she held up the system or anything. Washing dishes at Pizza Inn wasn't exactly a high stress job. There was no heavy lifting and if a situation would arise where they would be some of that, we certainly wouldn't expect Ms. Nancy to do any of it.
Ms. Nancy also didn't drive a car anymore even though she was legally entitled to do so. She said that she "enjoys the exercise" as she would walk 3.5 miles to and from Pizza Inn every day. Ms. Nancy was so dedicated to being on time that on many instances she would be there before the manager or the morning dough guy turned up and she would just be calmly sitting outside in her perfectly pressed uniform, ready to go. No complaints, no annoyances, just a smile and then she would put on her apron and get straight to work.
I never really got to know much about Ms. Nancy because she wasn't a chatterbox, she just wanted to get the job started, do it well, and then when the boss said she could go home if she wanted to, sometimes she would leave and other times she would say "I''m alright, I need to finish up this round of dishes first" and no manager would ever argue with her.
She was just a sweet old lady and that makes what happened to her so upsetting to all of us. One day while Ms. Nancy was walking home some local heartless thugs decided to pull over and knock her to the ground and steal her purse which knowing Ms. Nancy, probably contained about $8 in bills and 38 cents in coins. Then injured her when they knocked her over and she had a hairline fracture in her forearm from where she hit the ground. She told the police that they had tried to steal her necklace but she absolutely refused to let go of it because it was a gift from her granddaughter. I don't think the thieves cared but Ms. Nancy had super-human strength when it came to defending it.
We were all very upset when she came back to work with bruises on her arm, a cast, and a bruise on her face as well.
Between the 2 dozen or so people that worked there, we had a tremendous amount of outrage because like most people, we all have a profound level of respect for the elderly and some of the people that worked there were kind of connected to the parts of the city or the people in those parts of the city that might know some of the criminal underworld.
This was the mid 90's so it is not like there were cameras everywhere but a much-more-than-you-would-expect manhunt started happening on the part of the local police as well.
One of the morning cooks who was basically a permanent fixture there, cared a lot about Ms. Nancy and went door-to-door in the neighborhood where she was attacked and asked for any information that they could provide. Some of his leads paid off and he got a make and model of the car that the thugs who attacked her were driving.
It was at that point that vigilante justice was about to kick in because I want to say his name was "Terry" but I'm not sure about that, he kind of saw this attack on Ms. Nancy as an attack on his own family - I think we all kind of did.
When we suspected that we had found the car, Terry and some of the others wanted to just go over there and kick the door in and beat the hell out of everyone inside but Ms. Nancy caught wind of this and berated everyone for considering to do that to anyone. In the end we got the police involved and I think the police lied to them a little bit and said something like they have camera footage of the crime, that the teenagers admitted to it.
Ms. Nancy refused to press charges. The police could have done it without her approval citing menace to society laws or whatever they are called, but Ms Nancy insisted that she didn't want to ruin those boys lives with a criminal record. The police had a real nice compromise. They would be required to escort Ms Nancy to and from work for a month and this sounds a bit silly in today's time because what's to stop them from just attacking her again? But back in those days we didn't think about it in such a way. The 3 teenagers were seen every day, dropping Ms. Nancy off at work and later one or two of them would come back to escort her home.
I recall seeing one of them picking her up one day - they had to walk as Ms. Nancy wanted the exercise, and there wasn't an ounce of animosity on her or their faces. She had "killed them with kindness" and while I don't know if this happened or not because I changed jobs, I like to think that the story ends with them becoming lifelong friends with Ms. Nancy and turning their lives around and turning their backs on criminal activity forever because of her.
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I fear that today's generation or even my own generation as well as just plain me, that there are not many people like Ms. Nancy anymore, people so kind-hearted that they wish no ill-will towards anyone, even the people who physically assaulted her and robbed her.
This was a long time ago so Ms Nancy has definitely passed on as she would be well over 100 years old at this point but I believe we could all learn a lot from Ms. Nancy. A truly kind soul. It's been over 30 years since I last saw her, but I can still see her kind face and hear her laugh if I close my eyes. Just a truly wonderful person.