Cops and Robbers


Cops and Robbers
July 30, 2020
When I lived in Bullhead, Arizona, I was in first grade, and my friends and I loved to play cops and robbers. It was during this time that we actually hung a robber who was gotten down quickly by one of the store clerks. It continued to be one of our favorite games to play along with cowboys and Indians which I’m sure is not an acceptable game anymore. I bring this up because when I returned from serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I was hired by 7-11 and had the unwanted opportunity for play cops, robbers, and clerk.
The first store I worked at was located on Nevada Highway just past Henderson, Nevada. I really liked the job and the money was good, especially for someone who had not worked for some time. The store was managed by a man named Art. I should know more, but I can’t remember. It was a great job. I worked from two in the afternoon to ten at night. After a few weeks, I was the assistant manager and worked a shift from about eleven in the morning to seven at night.
The shift I worked overlapped Art’s shift in the late afternoon. On one occasion a man came up to my side of the counter and showed a pistol and held the place up. I kept trying to get Art’s attention, but it didn’t seem to work until I went over and while he had his register open, I took all of the bills out. He looked at me, and I said, “We are being held up.” It didn’t seem to register with him at first. I guess he thought I needed a lot of change. As soon as the thief left, I said that we had just been held up.
Luckily, the robber didn’t take the change so we could call the police on the payphone in the store. This was a time of no cell phones or telephone in the store other than the payphone. The police came and we closed down the store for a while so we could check to see how much had been taken. When you check out after your shift, you are usually part of a dollar off because of change given, or if someone was a few cents short, but the investigators who came figured that either Art, myself, or both had just taken the money and called the police to cover up taking the money. This, of course, was not the case, but they were leery of our statements.
A week later we were held up again by the same man, and the police caught him, and he confessed to robbing the store twice. The detective told us then that they originally thought that we had just taken the money.
1958 Cadillac like the one my Asst. manager drove off in.
I finally got a store franchise of my own on Lake Mead Boulevard in Las Vegas. I had worked there for some time when my assistant manager took off for California to live (with my car which he forgot to pay for).  I worked eight hours on and eight hours off for several months and made enough money to buy a new car and head to Dixie College in St. George, Utah. About a month before I was to leave, I was held up again. This time the man was quite jittery and sweaty and smelled of alcohol. I wasn’t really very scared the first two times I was held up, but the last time I was.
I wasn’t sure what he would do. He wanted the money, which I gave him, and then he wanted me to lay down on the floor behind the registers. I was afraid he would shoot me, but he didn’t, and he was quickly arrested and found guilty of robbing several small stores.
It was time for me to move on and go to school and get a better job and education which I was able to do. I haven’t been held up since.

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