The Help a Brother Out bake sale started off on a sunny day.  A sunny day that turned black.  Upon my arrival, a heavy-set women, dead-set on revenge, is accosting the bakers: “People just don't respect my property!”

Bent over next to her emotionally battered GMC Envoy, she points to a small scratch on the bumper: “I worked hard to get where I am.”

I have seen this crime countless times before on my beat.  Some hoodlum hits the bumper of a parked vehicle while parallel parking, leaving a path of wreckage and emotional ruin in its heinous wake.  It seems like such a banal crime, but it's anything but.  These thug's wanton disregard for property is an affront to everything we in the good society stand for.  Intimidated witnesses make it impossible to prosecute these damn bastards.  Finally, a warrior is taking her stand against the specimens on the darkest underbelly of the criminal world.

She runs up to an abused VW van, grasping onto the last legs of its mechanical life after decades of thoughtless neglect and parallel-parking fender benders, and yells in an accusatory tone that only a widower could possibly understand: “Who's dirty van is this?  Does it belong to one of you?”

“Do you want me to get rid of her?,” whispers the lanky male companion of one of the bakers.

“No, I can handle it,” the baker quietly replies with a coquettish grin. “Miss, we didn't see anything.  We don't know whose van this is.  Is there anything more I can help you with?”  Her innocent-sounding tone screams of a guilty conscious.

“I need a pen!  People just have no respect for my vehicle.  Do you have paper for a note?,” the woman bellowed in anguish, distraught by the realization that these individuals are part of the menacing system that allows these crimes to go unpunished.

Within moments, the victim grabs a pen from the clutches of the criminal enabler.  She begins writing her contact information in a language not suitable for sensitive eyes on the back a receipt from St. Francis, the slummy breakfast dive from up the street know to serve hardened, tattoo-covered punks.  “I can't believe people have no respect for how hard I have to work to get where I am,” she mumbles in disbelief.

A storm cloud circles overhead.  She snatches her note up and places it under the windshield-whipper of the van and resumes her pursuit of facts, clues, anything that will help bring the criminals to justice.

“You really don't know whose van this is?  I worked a long time to buy this truck.  This isn't right…”

The bakers remain nauseatingly silent.

Appearing from the dark shadows of 24th Street, two barflies covered in the wretched stench of tequila stumble past while boisterously yelling about nonsense.  They climb into the van and, upon noticing the note, engage their windshield wipers to avoid the confrontation.

The victim, smelling her assailants nearby, jumps from the sidewalk and sticks her head in the driver-side window. “YOU HIT MY CAR.  YOU NEED TO PAY TO FIX THIS.  ARE YOU DRUNK?”

The degenerates where not amused.  The driver turns to the lady hanging in his window and yells, “Bitch, smoke a joint and chill out!”  Laughing along with his criminal companion, he hits the gas and speeds off down the street.

Another thug goes free.  In disbelief, I go back to my office, walk right past my secretary, sit down at my desk and pull out a bottle of scotch.  The woman who will never be able to fix the damage to her bumper.  The bakers who will never be able to shake the nightmare of watching a man scratch an SUV out of their minds.  The GMC Envoy who had its virgin coat of paint ripped from it in the dark, trash covered alley way in the Mission District.  What a dark world we live in.