I was there a year later when Rebecca, fully recovered and in therapy, stood before a room full of people at a Guardian’s fundraiser and told her story. How an eight-year-old girl named Rebecca Martinez had run from her stepfather and found safety with bikers. How she’d grown up, thought she’d found love, ended up repeating the cycle. How her daughter had run the same path and found the same protectors waiting.
“They say lightning doesn’t strike twice,” Rebecca said, Tank and Emma beside her on the stage. “But sanctuary does. Protection does. Love does. The Guardians saved me twice – once as a child, once through my child. They showed me that some promises last forever, that some people dedicate their lives to being the help that wasn’t there for them.”
And sometimes, at gas stations or grocery stores, I see it happen again. A child in trouble, scanning the crowd for leather and skulls. Finding safety in the last place most people would look. Running toward the scary-looking bikers instead of away from them.
Because word spreads in the way that important information does – whispered from teacher to student, from survivor to victim, from mother to child. If you’re in trouble, if you’re scared, if someone is hurting you and no one else will help, look for the skull angels. Say “sanctuary.” They’ll protect you.
The Guardians of the Children. Proof that heroes don’t always wear capes or carry badges. Sometimes they wear leather vests and ride motorcycles. Sometimes they look like the danger they’re protecting you from. Sometimes the scariest-looking person in the room is the safest one for a child in crisis.Continue reading…
