✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

An Oakland home invasion victim writes about her experience

sfstandard.com · 5,551 words · saved by 1 readers

A mentally ill man invaded my home, and the cops took two days to show up. But who was the victim? And who is to blame? I am on a Zoom call late Wednesday morning when I think I hear notes being played on the piano downstairs. A neighborhood cat must have come in and walked on the keyboard, I think. The back door is open, as it usually is, so Nala, our pit bull, can come and go during the day. I keep talking but wrap up the call early and go downstairs. In the kitchen, something catches my eye. On the shelf under the spices, where the water glasses live, in one of those plastic sleeves that nice cards come in, there is a laminated dollar bill onto which someone has stamped letters to make it say NEVER FOR MONEY ALWAYS FOR LOVE This is a line from “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” a song by the Talking Heads. It is my favorite song. I take a picture and text it to my best friend, who’d been over the previous night, and to my husband, who is in London. My friend texts back: WHAT?

ADVERTISEMENT Skip to main content Culture ‘Not your house. My house’: A home invasion and its agonizing aftermath A mentally ill man invaded my home, and the cops took two days to show up. But who was the victim? And who is to blame? Jennifer Pahlka at her home of 22 years in Oakland on Thursday. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard By Jennifer Pahlka Published Aug. 10, 2024 at 6:00am Share Share Copy link to this article Email (opens in new tab) Twitter (opens in new tab) Bluesky (opens in new tab) Facebook (opens in new tab) LinkedIn (opens in new tab) Telegram (opens in new tab) W

Explore this link on the map →

related reading