Meet Madison native who spotted pipe bomb
Karlin Younger wanted to get her laundry done early on Jan. 6. She knew there was going to be a protest and rally in Washington, D.C., but that wasn’t unusual — many groups protest in the nation’s capital for many reasons throughout the year.
“Normally when I’m working, even if there’s something taking place at the Capitol, I don’t necessarily hear it,” said Younger, a native of Madison who works for the U.S. Department of Commerce. “None of us were on high alert that what would then happen would happen.”
Protesters have a way of congesting the sidewalks and because of how her neighborhood is constructed she must walk around her block to get to her laundry and take out the garbage in her building. On her route Younger walks through a shared alley with the Republican National Committee.
On Jan. 6, on her way from switching her clothes from the washer to the dryer, she saw something on the ground.
“As I was going back into the alley that’s when, by sheer luck, that’s when I looked down and see this piece of metal debris, that I thought was a metal piece of recycling or something,” Younger said. “That’s when I looked down and I really had trouble processing what I could possibly be looking at.”
She looked at the object and wondered what it was.
Is that a pipe? Are those wires? This has got to be a joke. There’s just no way that this is possibly what it looks like.
“Sometimes people think about this like it would be in the movies where you see something and you run and you start screaming or something, but it wasn’t like that at all,” Younger said. “It’s so easy in those moments to carry on with your day, like, maybe make it somebody else’s problem. But something in my gut just said this really doesn’t look right and I better find someone and that’s when the adrenaline really kicked in, the possibility that this could be real.”
Younger alerted a nearby security guard who called law enforcement. Once police arrived, Younger and her neighbors were evacuated from their homes and were told they could go back inside once police left.
As she was standing on a street corner waiting to go back inside, Younger started hearing the sirens.
“All the sirens were all going up toward the Capitol and we were getting alerts on our phone like the rest of the country and the world that things were getting serious just up the way at the Capitol,” Younger said. “That’s when the decision was made that we should probably get off the streets and that’s when I headed to a friend’s house.”
A 2002 Madison West grad
Younger, a graduate of Madison West High School in 2002 and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2006, found one of two suspected pipe bombs that were placed near the Republican and Democratic National Committees as the U.S. Capitol was under siege by rioters. Five people were killed, including a Capitol police officer.
“I think everyone watching that day was blinking at their television screens wondering ‘How is this real? How is this happening?’” Younger said of watching what unfolded.
The FBI put out a call for information and Younger reached out to them and told them how she found the device.
Younger said she is still processing the moment.
Growing up in Madison, Younger said, she always had an interest in politics and the world beyond Wisconsin.
When she was at UW-Madison she studied international relations and Chinese.
She went to graduate school at the University of Oxford and after graduation got a job at a London-based consulting company called Control Risks as an analyst working on “transnational terrorism.”
Younger has no experience in law enforcement or the military but believes her time in London helped her recognize the pipe bomb when she saw it.
Today Younger works for the Department of Commerce in an independent agency called FirstNet, working with telecommunications for first responders.
When she looks outside her window she sees five to 10 National Guardsmen deployed to Washington, D.C., to keep the peace ahead of the inauguration of Joe Biden on Wednesday.
But the path to the garbage and laundry has a different feel.
“I always check that spot now, just out of instinct,” Younger said.
When interacting with your surroundings, Younger encourages people to trust their gut.
“If you see something, say something,” Younger said. “I think it’s a lesson that so many people hear but don’t really internalize. That’s always important.”