Stranger danger lessons
Lodi Police volunteers teach students to protect themselves
On an overcast Tuesday morning, volunteers from the Lodi Police Department’s Partners Program and crime prevention team gave a presentation on “stranger danger” to a group of students in George Washington Elementary School’s multipurpose room.
Mary Eggers — a crime prevention volunteer who coordinates the presentations at schools such as Washington Elementary, Lawrence Elementary, Beckman Elementary, Joe Serna Jr. Charter School and more — told the students that if a stranger asks them to go somewhere that they should say “no” in a loud voice, run away and tell a trusted adult.
“Do you think a policeman would be a trusted adult?” Eggers asked the students. “I think you know that a policeman is a trusted adult because of the uniform they wear.”
Other trusted adults include teachers, parents with children and grocery store employees wearing name tags and uniforms, Eggers said, telling a brief story of when she saw a store employee help a lost child find his father.
“You have to look for somebody you can trust,” Eggers said. “A trusted adult.”
Eggers referred to a children’s book with methods suspicious persons sometimes use to try and abduct children such as a man asking for help finding a lost cat and a woman asking children to get in her car, before teaching the students how to describe someone should they ever find themselves in a similar scenario.
“If you were in a situation where you were thinking you were in danger and you yell ‘no’ and went to get some help, you would still have to tell the trusted adult what that person looked like,” Eggers said.
Student volunteers then took part in various skits — with Eggers’ direction — to demonstrate some of those scenarios and how children should react.
In the first skit, two boys pretended to walk to school while Partners Lt. Stan Sogsti asked them to help him find his dog, which he said had gotten out of his van.
“Would you go with me?” Sogsti asked. “Would you help me find my doggy?”
All of the students shouted “no,” in unison, before describing Sogsti’s blue baseball cap, mustache, orange shirt, light blue jeans and walking stick.
“You’ve got to start at the top of his head and work your way down,” Eggers said.
In the second skit, two girls pretended to play catch in a front yard when Partners Sgt. Lynn Benbrook approached and asked if they liked candy.
“I bought two big bags of candy for trick or treat, and I can’t eat all of it myself,” Benbrook said. “If you come over to my car, you can have it and share it with all your friends.”
The girls said “no” and the students described Benbrook’s tan hat, glasses, T-shirt with an image of an airplane and brown leather backpack before Eggers selected two more student volunteers for the third skit.
“An adult would never ask you for help,” Eggers said before the skit began.
As two boys pretended to play soccer at a park, Partners Cpl. Karen Paige approached with one leg on a scooter, pretending to have an injured foot and asking for help getting into her car.
“I’ve got a dollar for each of you if you help me,” Paige said.
The boys said “no,” just as their fellow students did in the previous skits, and described Paige’s brown jacket and pants, white shirt and earrings.
“It would be good to help her, because we’re all helpers, but is she someone you know? No,” Eggers said.
The fourth and final skit covered what to do when someone besides a parent tries to pick a student up from school, such as another relative or a coworker.
“Some families have what are called passwords, and only your family knows the password,” Eggers said.
One boy and one girl pretended to be siblings waiting for their mother to pick them up from school, and when Partners and crime prevention volunteer Kathy Robertson approached claiming that their sick mother sent her to pick them up, the students asked her for the password.
“She’s so sick, I think she forgot to give me,” Robertson said. “Come on, let’s get in my car.”
The students said “no” and described Robertson’s short brown hair, glasses, yellow sweater, blue pants and brown shoes before Sogsti taught the students how to escape when someone tries to grab their arms.
“Knowledge is power, and today, what we’d like to do is give you some knowledge that will help you for the rest of your lives,” Sogsti said.
Sogsti enlisted the help of Krystina Tonetti, who teaches second and third grade at Washington, asking her to grab his wrist so he could demonstrate an escape technique.
“The weakest part of your grip is right here,” Sogsti said, pointing to the spot on his wrist where Tonetti’s fingers met. “You want to take advantage of the weaknesses in another person so you can get away and tell a trusted adult.”
Sogsti twisted his arm and pulled it from Tonetti’s grasp with a smile, escaping with minimal effort on his part.
“It’s like magic, isn’t it?” Sogsti said.
Sogsti then asked Tonetti to grab both of his arms, pulling his right arm from her left hand and grabbing her right wrist before Eggers concluded the presentation.
“Remember: Say ‘no,’ run and look for that trusted adult and if they grab a hold of you, twist and pull,” Eggers said.
The Partners and crime prevention volunteers then passed out rubber bracelets to students such as 8-year-old Zeth Garza, a third-grader in Tonetti’s class, as they lined up and filed out of the multipurpose room.
“I liked the twist and pull,” Garza said. “It’s a really good thing to know.”
Roberto Rodriguez, 7, a second-grader in Tonetti’s class, also enjoyed learning the “twist-and-pull” method.
“(I also liked) the book, the part where the guy said he lost his cat,” Rodriguez said.