SPOKANE, Wash – One early December evening, Cheryl Garrison was shopping at Fred Meyer on Thor, getting supplies to make Christmas cookie tins. She says she was cautious and parked in an area with lights and security cameras. However, that didn’t stop what happened next.
“Before I could even say anything, he hit me, he hit me hard and I was on the ground,” said Garrison.
Garrison says after a man pushed her to the ground and stole her purse, “he knew what he was doing you could tell it’s not his first time, and it probably won’t be his last time.”
She says officers who saw the security camera footage told her that they believe he singled her out because she was alone, “when you find out somebody’s actually stalking you around the grocery store you know waiting for you to leave that’s kind of scary.”
She says after this experience, she wants to be prepared if it happens again, “take classes for self-defense. I think I want to do something like that.”
And learning how to protect yourself could save your life.
Hailee Meyers, an instructor at Krav Maga Spokane, says Garrison’s story unfortunately isn’t unusual, “around this time of year, every time there’s at least one or two women who say it’s getting darker out? I’m not confident walking by myself.”
She says a big part of self-defense is confidence, “holding yourself differently and portraying that you’re not somebody to be messed with or you’re gonna yell, you’re going to fight back you’re gonna make any attempted struggle really difficult is a huge deterrent for people who are looking around trying to pick out easy targets.”
Although Garrison plans to learn how to protect herself, she’s frustrated that she has to, “I’m tired of these people going out thinking they can do what they want and not even caring what they are doing to people.”
She’s asking the person who did this to her to think, ‘What if the roles were reversed?’ “How would they feel if somebody did that to their mother, their grandmother, their sister?”
