Story Behind The Pictures

Betcha can't guess the story these two polaroids are telling.

See, they're evidence photos from around 1982.   I found them the last time I was helping my mom go through her stuff.

Back in the day, my little 5'2 mom was a regional security officer for Payless Drugstore.  She oversaw all the stores and personnel in the state, and regularly worked the one in our town. 

While my mom and I have a complicated relationship today, I was extremely proud of her career when I was growing up and thought she had the coolest job ever.  The home store had a catwalk, only accessible by outside doors and required a twenty foot vertical climb up a steel ladder.  Once you reached the top there was a narrow hallway running the length of the store with rows of two way mirrors looking out onto the sales floor.  My mom would walk that hallway watching people with her high powered binoculars and was really good at picking out the criminals.
I LOVED visiting her at work.  Mainly because I could use the second pair of binoculars and watch all the hot guys....close up....in great detail if you get my drift.  My mom would be following someone suspicious at one end of the hallway, and I'd be 150 feet on the other end, often thankful the darkness hid my huge erection.
The photos above tell the obvious story of a college girl's theft of a butterfinger and a tube of lipstick.  The other story they speak to, but isn't as obvious is that of a little woman who picked up a  FBI agents, professionals from all walks of life, teenagers, parents who made their kids steal, an off duty policeman, a white supremicist wanted on federal charges of murder even a transexual she showed immense compassion for at a time when that wasn't usually the case....and so many more during a career that lasted more than 22 years.   My little mom was literally shot at once while working in Boise, and at home, she had a knife pulled on her three or four times, and was thrown to the ground, almost ran over twice and foiled numerous cases of employee theft.   

To look at her today you would never guess all that history about my mom in a million years, but these, now retro, kinda cool polaroids offer a glimpse into a fascinating past.