SF schools boss scares off would-be robbers
Superintendent’s instincts, training help fend off assailants outside home
SANTA FE — Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Veronica Garcia relied on her instincts and training to scare off would-be robbers last Thursday night outside her home.
“Ironically, I had just taped a ‘Run, Hide, Fight’ video that morning,” she said in a phone interview Tuesday.
Garcia had returned to her home not far from Santa Fe High School about 7 p.m. after giving a lecture at the Higher Education Center that night. She pulled into her parking spot, got out of her car and went to open the trunk to retrieve a reusable shopping bag to put her computer and paperwork in, as a wet snow was falling. She then noticed two men approach, one of whom was carrying what she first thought was a walking stick but then recognized to be a metal pipe.
“I realized, ‘Oh, oh. I’m in trouble,’” she said.
The men demanded her purse, which she had left on the front seat of her car.
“I kind of went into my de-escalating mode,” she said, adding that she summoned her decades of experience as an educator and in
dealing with emotionally disturbed youths. “I knew if they got agitated it would only make it worse. So I calmly and deliberately told them that I was going to give them my purse.”
Garcia said she could tell the man with the pipe relaxed and waited for her to retrieve her purse. But instead of reaching for the purse, “I got in the car, slammed the door and locked it, turned on the hazard lights and started honking the horn.”
That was enough to scare off the perpetrators. The two men got into another car driven by a third person and sped off.
“It was frightening,” she said of the experience. “I wouldn’t recommend what I did to anyone. I think every situation is different. But it was a circumstance where my instincts just kicked in. I had this training, and I knew what to do.”