Holiday Reminder - Personal Security

[Seshat]

Oh Jester.

I honestly can't think of anything to say to that, other than that you have my sympathy.

I'll donate something to the missing-persons charities local to me, in her name. I'm afraid it's all I can think of to do to help from this distance: hopefully someone who happens to be local to you will donate similarly to the charities local to you in the name of someone missing from here, and thus both sides are helped.

Note to everyone else:
Get to know your neighbours, especially the lonely, vulnerable ones. Keep clear, up-to-date photographs of your loved ones. Keep a family calendar, and a family contacts list, complete with exactly where people are going and when they're expected home.
(No, it's not a curfew. It's a 'Seshat would have left location X at time Y, and usually takes route Z to travel home'; which gives the police a place to start.)

If you live alone, keep such a calendar yourself, and make sure two or three trusted friends have access to it.

[wolfie]

Something I do quite frequently, since I am guilty of having several of those "my entire life is in these purses", if you have a vehicle with a trunk - lock your purse in the trunk when out shopping and just carry your keys and debit/credit card(s) in your pants pocket.

But don't lock your purse in the trunk AT THE SHOPPING CENTRE - no-goodniks watch the parking lot, and they'll see you doing it. Lock it in the trunk before you leave work/home, so it's already out of sight when you get to the store.

If you get any valuable items over the holidays (new stereo, big-screen TV, latest game console, etc.), don't put the cartons out for recycling "as-is". Get a "low value" carton (4 pack gallon jugs of washer fluid is a good one), cut up the "high value item" carton and put it in the "low value" carton, then put a few layers of other "low value" cardboard (check out the "grab one to take your groceries home in" bin at the store) on top before tying it up and putting it for recycling. After all, a potential burglar walking the neighbourhood is going to have different reactions to household "A" that has a carton for a plasma screen TV at curbside, and household "B" that has a washer fluid carton stuffed with cut-up laundry detergent cartons at curbside (but nobody sees the cut-up plasma screen TV carton in the bottom of the box).

[Andara Bledin]

If you live alone, keep a personal calendar in G+ or Facebook or some other social network and share it with 2 or 3 trusted friends so that should something untoward happen, even if it's just your car breaking down, someone will know where to start looking should you not show up when you're supposed to.

Which reminds me: We should really make a point of letting Nekojin's family know when we plan to take the Angeles National Forest route up to visit. That could end up a very scary place to break down.

^-.-^

[Jester]

I'll donate something to the missing-persons charities local to me, in her name. I'm afraid it's all I can think of to do to help from this distance...

I appreciate the sympathy and the donation, of course. But there IS something you can do, even from that distance, that would more directly help.

You can help spread this flyer via any social media you have access to, and ask your friends to continue to spread it. I am going to continue to hammer this point to anyone who will listen until Lacey is found.

Yes, you are in Oz, and it is unlikely she will turn up there. But not impossible. And, forgetting that prospect, remember that through the internet we know people from around the world. Hell, here I am, an Arizonan trying to help find a girl in California from my residence in Florida, and am talking to an Australian as part of that effort to do so. The internet has truly made ours a global society, and as such, we CAN spread such messages globally. Just because you are in Australia and I am in Florida doesn't mean we can't help spread the word to help find Lacey.

With your help and with other people's help, we WILL find her. We must. There is no other option.

(Isn't this a bit selfish of me, focusing on just this one missing person who happens to be a friend? Yes. Yes it is. And I really don't care if people think that of me. I've been called worse for lesser reasons.)

[Seshat]

I appreciate the sympathy and the donation, of course. But there IS something you can do, even from that distance, that would more directly help.

You can help spread this flyer via any social media you have access to, and ask your friends to continue to spread it. I am going to continue to hammer this point to anyone who will listen until Lacey is found.

I have neither a twitter account nor a facebook page, nor really any other social media (major, major introvert); however I have access to a friend whose twitter account is widely followed. I passed the facebook page from your other thread to her, for her to tweet and/or blog.

Much more effective than my own social media, but it should be in the spirit of your request.

I really hope she's found, and okay.


Edit to add: No, not really. Focussed effort is how missing people get found. The saddest cases of missing people are the cases where there's noone to care like you're caring: they don't get found, or not as often.

[Jester]

I have neither a twitter account nor a facebook page, nor really any other social media (major, major introvert)

You have email? Because that is, of course, social media, albeit not in the same we we generally think of social media.

Edit to add: No, not really. Focussed effort is how missing people get found. The saddest cases of missing people are the cases where there's noone to care like you're caring: they don't get found, or not as often.

Well, there are plenty of us that are focused, and damn it, we are going to find her.

[MadMike]

2 - Do this in the car. Pretty much always. The stuff that's in there when you're not driving can be replaced, but you can't.

When I bought my car, I found out that it had a feature that automatically locked all the doors when it was taken out of park, and then unlocked them all when it was put back in park. I liked the first part, but not the second part. I looked thru the manual, and found out that you can disable either one. So I changed it so that it still locks the doors automatically, but doesn't unlock them automatically.

[Jester]

Pretty cool feature, Mike. What kind of car is it?

[MadMike]

Pretty cool feature, Mike. What kind of car is it?

It's a 2006 Saturn Ion 2. My last car was a Saturn, and I was happy with it, so I got one after it got totalled by that drunk that hit me and ran.

Other than the fact that the damn things are mostly plastic, and they shatter like an egg when someone hits it, I like it. I probably would have kept buying them, if they hadn't stopped making them.

[Jester]

It's a 2006 Saturn Ion 2. My last car was a Saturn, and I was happy with it, so I got one after it got totalled by that drunk that hit me and ran.

Other than the fact that the damn things are mostly plastic, and they shatter like an egg when someone hits it, I like it. I probably would have kept buying them, if they hadn't stopped making them.

Sounds very similar to my experience with my Chevy Blazers. Loved the 1989 one so much, I traded it in for a 2000. And I would probably get a third one down the road if they hadn't stopped making them. (It's the mid-sized Blazer, not the behemoth Trail Blazer.) Also, just like your Saturns are fragile, my Blazers have been rather shoddy when it came to non-mechanical stuff, like instrumentation, the rear hatch, the headliner, seat adjusters, power locks, etc.