Pizza Face

By Randy Haglund

Delivering pizza can be exciting.

I know, I used to do it part-time for Pizza Haven in the Flour Mill for a couple years while I went to college. We had the best pizza in Spokane. You may have already read about one of my Pizza Haven adventures in my story, Fright on the Monroe Street Bridge.

I delivered Pizza for a couple more years after graduation because it was fun. But sometimes, the excitement was the kind I hadn’t bargained for.

Like one November night in 1980 just before closing when they sent me out to 1326 West Sharp to deliver two large pizzas with everything. It was the only house in a deserted neighborhood, surrounded by warehouses and wholesale suppliers. When I pulled up it looked like the house was dark, just like the rest of the area, but I couldn’t tell if the shades were pulled tight.

Since it was nearly midnight and probably my last delivery, I was anxious to get it done. I went to the back of the delivery truck, where a propane-powered oven kept the pizzas hot. So hot, that I had to be careful handling the boxes to keep from getting burned.

Walking up the front walk, I began to think it might be a “phony,” the term we used for a prank call. From the porch it was evident that there were no curtains on the front window, and not a stick of furniture in the place. Shaking my head, I turned around and descended the steps.

That’s when three young men approached from a construction yard across the street. It sent chills through me. I had never been robbed before, nor even heard of it happening to any of our drivers, but my spidey sense told me this might be the first one.

Trying to stay calm, I cleared my throat. “Did you guys order the pizza?”

Two of the men cowered behind the other. “Why, yes,” the lead man said. “We did.” Then they all produced three-foot-long two-by fours they had been hiding behind their backs.

My only thought was how I would get out of this mess. I quickly weighed my options.

Option 1: Cooperate.

Give them the pizzas and the money and let them go. No muss, no fuss.

But I hated that idea. Letting the bad guys get away with it. Plus, what would stop them from taking my wallet? There wasn’t much money in it, but recently I had lost my old wallet, and had to replace everything. My driver’s license, credit cards, you name it. It was a pain the rear pocket. I didn’t want to go through that again.

Option 2: Fight.

Just kick those clubs out of their hands with my lightning-quick reflexes and send them scurrying for cover. But everything I knew about martial arts came from watching Bruce Lee movies.

Option 3: Run.

As a school boy, I always won the 50-yard dash in P.E. Nowadays, if I got into a footrace with a woman nine months pregnant, I’d finish in third place. But at twenty-four, I was still speedy. I could outrun anyone wielding a club.

“Set the pizza down,” said the man in front.

With what I hoped was a steady voice, I said, “Don’t you wanna see what you ordered?” I opened the top box to display a large pizza with everything, a habit I had adopted with paying customers. Steam rose from the pizza in the November night air as he examined it.

Then I delivered the pizza smack into his kisser! In the same motion, I bolted for my truck, about thirty feet away. There may have been some expletives coming from behind me, but I didn’t glance back to admire the fruits of my labor. In a flash, I was in the cab, banged the door shut, and slammed my hand down on the lock.

Crack! I jumped when Pizza Face’s club glanced off my side window.

My fear had morphed into fury. I had been violated. These guys are going to pay!

I started the truck and looked over as the two back-ups were checking out the pizzas on the lawn to see what could be salvaged. They probably expected me to speed away. But I had something else in mind. Cranking the wheel to the left, the truck jumped the curb, bringing my vehicle up onto the lawn of the vacant house.

They lost all interest in pizza, dropped their clubs and skedaddled toward railroad tracks that ran behind the house. Pizza Face was right on their heels. I was right on his.

I punched the gas pedal, but the tires spun into the soft grass. When they gained purchase the vehicle lurched forward, hot behind the assailants. Anger flooded through me, and my intent was to run them down.

But they reached the railroad tracks in the nick of time. I couldn’t follow them down the tracks. It was too bumpy.

Fuming, I watched them for a moment as they made their getaway westward down the tracks. Stepping on the gas again, I made my way around the block to cut them off. Speeding down residential streets, I remembered my two-way radio.

The adrenaline pumping through me prevented me from barking out my call letters. I sputtered, gasping for air.

Donna, my dispatcher cut in. “Randy, are you okay?”

“I’ve… (pant) been robbed!” Which technically wasn’t true, since they didn’t get anything. But because of my trouble communicating, I chose brevity.

“Are you hurt?” Anxiety was evident in her voice.

I managed to tell her that I was not hurt but she should call the police. When she asked for my location I told her I was looking for the punks.

“No, Randy, no! Just go to the police department and tell them about it.”

She was right. By now I had come to my senses about running them over. But I still wanted to find them and tell the police where they were. I had reached the next block now and shined my flashlight up and down the tracks. No sign of them. They could have gone in any direction, and there were so many places they could hide.

“Randy?”

“Okay, I’m heading over to the police station now.”

But before going, I prowled the streets for several minutes, searching. Circling back to the scene of the crime, I drove up onto the lawn again and ran my rear tires several times over the pizza boxes, just to make sure there was nothing left to scrounge.

The police station was only four blocks away behind the county courthouse. I informed the desk sergeant that three men tried to rob me, and gave him the whole story, except the part about trying to run them over. Cops tend to frown on that sort of thing.

When he asked for descriptions of my attackers, I scratched my chin. “Uhhh…” My focus had been on escaping, not scrutinizing my assailants.

So he prompted me. “Were they white?”

“Yes! They were white males.” That, I was sure of.

Height? Hair color?  Clothing?  Hats? Facial hair?

I had nothing. All three could have walked into the station at that moment and I would’ve been unable to identify them.

He sported a quirky grin. “I’ll be sure to put out an A.P.B. right away on three white males.”

“Well,” I said, “you could say that one of them is covered in pizza toppings.”

Pizza Haven was already closed, but everyone stayed to hear my story. The manager scolded me for not just giving them the pizzas.

The next morning I got a phone call from a man identifying himself as Tim Hanson. “I’m down at the police station just going over last night’s reports and wondered if you could answer a few more questions.”

I’m always happy to cooperate with the police, but told him I still couldn’t give a better description of my attackers.

He told me that was alright, and asked me to go through the whole thing again. I had seen lots of cop shows, and they always asked witnesses to tell their stories over and over again, just to see if there were any inconsistencies. I made sure to tell it the same way as before. But then he asked me a surprising question, at least coming from a policeman.

“Weren’t you scared?”

Of course.  But the hoodlums looked even more terrified.

The next day, I was stunned to find an article about me in the evening paper, The Spokane Daily Chronicle. The article told the story of the robbery, quoting me and even included a cartoon illustration of the event.

Then I noticed the writer’s name. Tim Hanson.

I realized then that the caller had never identified himself as a cop; just that he was at the police station.

The article didn’t make my manager very happy. “Publicity like this gets people to thinking. Don’t be surprised if we get copy-cats.”

It turned out to be a prophecy. But that’s another story.

I believe that God protected me that night. Not from thugs, but from myself. People have asked me if I really think I could have mowed those guys down.

I could’ve, and would’ve.

But for some spinning tires and conveniently located railroad tracks, a moment of irrational rage could have turned my life in a terrible direction.

Instead, I have an amusing story to tell.

***

Tell us about a time when something got your adrenaline pumping.