The Great Bread Loaf Caper of 2004

One of the most incredible things I did as a part of the Monroe Police Department Citizens Academy last year was a visit to the training simulator at the Edmonds Police Department.

It’s this really cool interactive tool where you are presented with a potentially criminal scenario that is projected, life-size, onto a wall. You’re given a laser gun and the opportunity to figure out what to do. You might stumble across an obvious crime in progress in one scenario, while the next scenario might not be a crime at all. The scenarios range from innocent to subtle to extremely dynamic, and they change depending on how you behave. When you talk to the video projection, it responds. The goal is to apprehend the bad guys and avoid hurting innocent bystanders.

I sucked at it. Like seriously. I was the worst cop ever.

The funny part is that I couldn’t remember where the Edmonds Police Department was, so I used navigation to get there. Of course, once I got close, I quickly realized I knew exactly where I was going. I’ve been in trouble in Edmonds – the Great Bread Loaf Caper of 2004 – so I’ve made numerous trips to that police station and courthouse.

Also, my main drug dealer lived near five-corners, which is just up the street. I’m painfully familiar with that area. The drive brought back a lot of memories – mostly bad but also good.

There is no greater feeling in the world than when you’re sailing down the freeway with the windows down, the tunes cranked, money in your pocket and the knowledge that your dealer is home, holding and expecting you. Especially if you’re just a tiny bit dopesick, or maybe even a lot of the way dopesick. The unadulterated confidence that you feel knowing relief is literally right around the corner is delicious.

You are giddy and excited. It’s freedom.

It’s a sure thing.

Sadly, I haven’t found a lot of ways to match that exact feeling. I think the only thing that even remotely comes close has to do with love… But not love really. It’s that feeling that you have in the pit of your stomach when the person you have a soul-shattering crush on invites you to their house for the first time. It’s butterflies. It’s when you are driving to see the person who gives you butterflies and you are pretty sure that you’re going to be spending the night.

You can’t buy that feeling. You can’t buy butterflies. I love that feeling and I also kind of hate it.

Dope is easier. Dope doesn’t care what your ass looks like without clothes on. It doesn’t care about that roll of flab on your stomach or the lines on your face or what you look like in the morning. Dope doesn’t dump you for no reason. Dope doesn’t care if you’re clever or cool or awesome… With dope, you never have to worry about being enough.

I live in constant fear that I’m not enough. And I don’t believe people when they tell me that I am.

The ugliness of addiction outweighs its beauty by a longshot, however it’s not without beauty. I’ve said this before and I still believe it to be true – it’s the simplicity of addiction that makes it compelling. Heroin addiction is black and white. There are two states of being; sick or well.

Regular life is a kaleidoscope of muddled shades of grey that make me dizzy and exhausted.

At any rate, the Great Bread Loaf Caper of 2004 was a simple grocery store heist gone wrong… Except, we didn’t use the traditional cart method – we shoved everything into one of those little red baskets. That was why the bread loaf was so prominent. We took items of value as well, but they were tucked down inside the basket. That long, skinny loaf of French bread stuck out of the top as plain as day.

When we fled the store, witnesses saw the bread loaf and nothing else.

I don’t even know why we were doing that. I was living at Traveler’s at the time, which was a crappy hotel on 99 right by 220th. I already had dope in my hotel room but I guess we must have needed more, which was always the case. I was riding around with a girl I knew, I’ll call her Tina, and a couple guys too. I don’t remember who the guys were.

As we got back to Traveler’s, I was immediately surround by Edmonds and Mountlake Terrace PD. The grocery store was in Edmonds, and Mountlake Terrace PD must have been called to assist since my hotel was in its jurisdiction. Unfortunately, as they came up to the car and started questioning me, they spotted Tina in the back seat happily munching on that ill-fated loaf of French bread.

This is what is known as a clue.

Mountlake Terrace didn’t like me for some reason and wanted to go inside my hotel room. Luckily, they couldn’t. I wouldn’t let them, because I didn’t want them taking my dope, and I guess maybe they couldn’t get a warrant. I remember thinking, just hurry the fuck up because I want to go and smoke some crack. The Edmonds cop was super nice – he said he didn’t care about what was in my hotel room.

I guess he just cared a lot about bread. And possibly the stolen credit card I happened to have in my wallet. He cared about that too.

I never went to court so that became a warrant. My famous loaf of bread warrant. That warrant followed me around like a bad rumor on social media – popping back up when I least expected it. I was on federal probation three years later and my PO called me to her office one day. She was so baffled that she gave me the news in the form of a question.

“You have a warrant out of Edmonds for…. A loaf of bread?”

The thing about it that I found irritating was that I shouldn’t have had that warrant. I had taken care of all my warrants when I was on pretrial status with the feds, which is sort of a preliminary probation that you go on pending sentencing. I did the whole deal; I went to court, paid the fine and did the community service. I even did the community service in Edmonds. It annoyed me that it popped back up as a warrant, plus I hated my probation officer, so I took no action. I figured that the Seattle police had more important things to do than screw with me over a loaf of bread warrant.

And they did. Until one night they didn’t, and I had an apartment full of Seattle police officers. Fortunately, they didn’t care much about the loaf of bread. I had popped up as a known associate of somebody they were looking for, and when they noticed I had a warrant, they decided to come for a visit. They were waving around this truly hideous mugshot of me.

“We could take you to jail right now,” they said.

But they didn’t.

I did appreciate not being incarcerated over a 3-year-old loaf of bread, so I drove up to Edmonds, quashed the warrant and got the whole thing straightened out. I decided to call the Seattle Police Department to let them know. One of the officers had left his card, so I knew how to get a hold of him. He was really happy that I called. I think that must have been in 2008, which means that I drove around Seattle for over a year with that warrant.

Being in Edmonds as a part of the academy, with law enforcement officers that I admire and respect and view as heroes, was incredibly rewarding. Especially once I realized where I was. Full circle moments like that happened often in my job as a reporter and I will miss them very much.

Moral of the story, perhaps exclude bread from your grocery store heist.

Also, for the record, I was way better at SWAT than I was at the simulator.

Monroe Police Department Citizens Academy 2016, Photo by Officer Craig Robertson