Reflections of an Interview

I interviewed a friend of mine who lived on the east side in the city of Detroit, her name is Marcie. She and her roomates lived 1 block south of Grosse Pointe and the difference in those two streets was amazing, totally different, the crime did not seem to ever cross that boundry, someone would get shot on her street but she said that she had never heard that someone was shot just one block up. I have lived all over metro Detroit area, Downriver, Warren, Livonia, Wixom, Farmington Hills, Canton, Redford, and Holly, but never lived in the actual city of Detroit.

Marcie spoke about the gunshots that went off at all hours of the night while she and her roommates lived there, but being in her early twenties at the time, never really thought that it would affect her or her roommates. The house was a huge old house where the landlord rented out the individual rooms but besides the bedrooms, everything else was common area. Once, right before moving out, she was home alone and a group of older teenage boys broke into the house. When she heard that she called her mom, telling her that she heard someone in the house, at that moment they walked into the room where she was and took the phone from her hand. She started crying and then one of the boys got on the phone with her mother and said some things to really scare her before hanging up the phone. Her mother called 911 and drove there as fast as she could, she normally lived at least 45 minutes away and arrived before the police. The boys just took her car keys and then left, not harming her.

I have been lucky that I have never had to live in fear of my life or that of my children, I believe it would be a terrible thing to lose your child. I can't imagine how terrified she must have been and being a mother myself I can't imagine the terror that went through her mother. Things like that make you think about how it really must be living in a place with so much crime.