Let's Not Meet Again

Saved By Bikers

My dad worked at a beachside bar & grille when I was little. In addition to being a chef, he ran and DJ'ed the bike and car shows for the restaurant. The car shows were usually on Wednesdays, and the bike nights were on Friday (a small detail, but important to the story).

The car shows were on a school night, so I was rarely allowed to go, but my father would often bring me to the bike nights. By all accounts, I was an adorable and pretty mellow kid, and the bikers absolutely loved me. And yes, you might say that this was no environment for a little girl, but I learned a lot about loyalty and friendship from being around bikers. My dad told me that some of them would call into the restaurant just to ask if I would be there that week, and they'd often bring me stuffed animals and candy.

My favorite of the bikers was a man that I affectionately called 'Uncle Teddy'. He was a friend of my parents and an absolute mountain of a man- around 6'8 and 400 pounds easily. He was an ex-Marine who loved his Harley and his cigars, and every week for 5 years he would bring me a Butterfinger and a Beanie Baby.

I was 6 years old the night it happened (2003). My father had brought me to the bike show as he normally did, but I couldn't keep my eyes open past 8 p.m. The show didn't end until 10, so my dad had gotten into the habit of putting an air mattress in the back of the restaurant, and he and Teddy would check on me every 15 minutes.

I was asleep when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was a man that I'd seen around before, and he wasn't dressed in biker gear. He was wearing a short-sleeved plaid shirt and jeans and looked greasy, but not particularly scary.

He smiled at me and told me that his name was 'Sean', that he was a friend of my dad's, and that my dad had asked him to drive me home.

My parents had tried to ingrain "stranger danger" in me, and they told me a thousand times to never talk to anyone I didn't know, but he knew mine and my dad's name, as well as the nickname everyone called me. I totally bought it.

I got up, grabbed the flamingo beanie baby Uncle Teddy had given me, and started to walk towards the parking lot. Sean didn't have a bike- he had a very old 4 door sedan. He opened the back door for me, and I climbed inside. You know how in senior citizen's homes, they often have plastic-wrapped couches or chairs? That's what the backseat of his car was like- totally covered in plastic. I think now that it was probably so there would be no trace of DNA left behind.

Sean started to drive away, and to this day I can't believe how lucky I got. He had parked the car behind the restaurant in a way that it wasn't immediately visible to the bike show, but as we pulled away, I saw Teddy heading through the door, presumably to check on me. He just happened to look up at that exact moment, probably to acknowledge the car, and I smiled at him.

Uncle Teddy didn't waste a moment, didn't even stop to tell my dad what was going on. He got on his bike and was on that car's ass before we had even totally cleared the avenue that led out of the parking lot.

The avenue that you had to take to get the restaurant was long, about a mile and a half, and then you had to go down another long road before you made it to the highway. Sean saw Teddy approaching in his rear-view and attempted to speed up, but he must have realized it was futile, he'd been seen and Teddy had his license plate # and a good description. Sean stopped the car, turned around and told me very calmly to get out of the car. I was scared by this point, and I didn't waste a moment climbing out and running to Teddy.

Sean burnt rubber driving away, and Teddy held me for a moment before putting me on the back of his bike and taking me back to my dad.

By the time we got back, cops had been called, and they were surrounding the place. A lot of the show had emptied out, and my dad was sobbing/screaming on the sidewalk outside of the restaurant. I'll never forget that moment.

I ran up to him, hugged him as tightly as I could, and then the rest is all a blur. I talked to cops, I talked to my dad, I even went down to the station and spoke to a sketch artist. I didn't get to home until around 2 am. Teddy never left my side.

An APB was put out on the vehicle, which had been reported as stolen. The sketch circulated around the local news stations, but it didn't turn up anything concrete. At one point I was asked to look at a line-up, but none of them were him.

Fast forward about 8 years. I was 14, and my dad decided I was old enough to know what happened.

Sean had been spotted lurking around the bike show a few times before that night, and was a customer at the restaurant fairly regularly. He knew my nickname because he had been watching me for over a month. He knew my schedule and consequently, how often Teddy and my dad checked on me.

When his evil plan was botched and Teddy brought me back to the show, everyone had left. I had assumed it was because the police had been investigating a crime scene, but I was wrong.

They were all out looking for Sean. Teddy told them the make and model of the car with a description of Sean, and one of the guys thought that he sounded like a guy that frequented one of the biker bars downtown.

I remember my dad paused for a long time, and I asked him what happened after that.

"They found him," he said.