Don’t think. Just react.
Megan Theard never thought her tae kwon do and self defense
classes would ever need to be used in a life-or-death situation.
She only started taking the classes a year earlier because her
husband and three children were involved.
Don’t think. Just react.
Megan Theard never thought her tae kwon do and self defense classes would ever need to be used in a life-or-death situation. She only started taking the classes a year earlier because her husband and three children were involved.
But there she was, slammed against her green minivan as a stranger fought to pry her keys from her hands in a dimly lit parking lot in San Jose Dec. 7.
Just two weeks before, Theard had surgery on her neck, having discs taken out of her spine and her neck fused using bone removed from her hip. Despite still wearing a neck brace, Theard met her mother that day to take care of most of the Christmas shopping.
“Gimp and gimpy, with me in my neck brace,” Theard joked. “We did a full day of shopping. I dropped her off at about 5.”
Instead of heading home after dropping her mother off, however, Theard remembered that she had one more errand to run before she went home.
“My oldest son had a book report, and I needed to get the book,” she said.
So Theard dropped over to the Borders Book Store at Oakridge Mall in San Jose and went to the bookstore. Realizing she had a bit of time to herself, Theard got the book but decided she would enjoy some quiet time to herself inside the bookstore.
“I was looking at the martial arts section, which is ironic,” she said. “I was looking at a magazine for my husband.”
By the time Theard returned to the parking structure outside the mall, it was 7:30 p.m. The dim yellow lights the poorly light the top level of the parking structure made it very dark as she walked back toward her green minivan.
“He jumped out from the front of my car,” she said. “No words were exchanged at all, he just pushed me against the car.”
Theard didn’t know what the man’s intentions were, whether he was trying to steal the car, kidnap her or even to kill her.
“He tried to grab my keys, and I broke my wrist away and threw my keys,” she said. “I just figured whatever was going to happen would happen here.”
Theard said always thought she would freeze up if she would ever be caught in this kind of situation – she was certain that she would be overcome with fear. On the other hand, she knows her children can handle themselves.
“I’d have no problem with him getting away from an adult,” she said as she gestured toward her 9-year-old son, Curtis, who was the first in the family to take interest in martial arts when he asked to join in kindergarten. “They train you so much that it literally becomes instinct. They just react now. I just absorb things through them.”
So one day, being a curious mother interested in her son’s passion – he and his older brother, Christian, will be testing for their black belts this year – she asked him what he would do if someone ever grabbed him from behind.
“There’s a pressure point on the top of the foot,” she said Curtis explained before stomping on her foot, making it swell for a week.
While a painful lesson, it was one Theard didn’t forget, and she realized that the stranger was grabbing her in the parking lot the same way she had grabbed Curtis just a few months before.
“I did what my son had shown me how to do. I stomped on his foot there and elbowed him across the face,” she said. “I’m sure he broke his nose.”
Without the keys to the car and realizing more than his ego was being bruised, the assailant became angry and shoved Theard against the car, threw her down and ran away.
“He slammed me on the cement on the hip I had surgery on,” she said. “I’m glad he left because there was no moving.”
By the time help arrived, the stranger was long gone, and Theard was worried she might have reinjured her neck. She was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital for x-rays. They found she had bruised her hip bone and pushed it out of place, but there was no major damage to her neck.
However, while the attack had lasted just seconds, it would be relived over and over again in her head.
“You don’t feel good afterward,” she said. “I lost no matter what. It wasn’t a macho thing. It was totally different.”
Theard’s husband didn’t know anything had happened until two and a half hours after the attack. She finally called him before being x-rayed when she realized the police, emergency workers and hospital employees failed to contact her family. She thought her family would be worried about her, but they were proud instead.
“I thought they would be scared for me,” she said about her kids. “They said, ‘Mom, I heard you kicked his butt.’ ”
If the experience itself wasn’t hard enough to take, Theard was called over and over again to go to the San Jose Police Station to talk to investigators and sketch artists.
“Like some people don’t like the hospital, I can’t take the police station,” she said.
Finally, it became to much for Theard, who suffered a severe stress attack.
“I couldn’t eat, sleep. I was ugly for two weeks; it was too much,” she said.
Theard called the detectives on the case and told them she couldn’t take anymore sitting in the police station and reliving the crime in her head.
As it turned out, similar crimes had been reported at nearby valley Faire Mall, as well. And she said an investigator already had a good idea of who was committing the crimes. However, Theard didn’t want to be involved anymore. She doesn’t have any idea whether the man was apprehended.
It took Theard more than a month to be able to talk about her experience with others.
“Afterward, my courage was gone,” she said. “I have to get it back.”
While Theard wants to continue her tae kwon do training, her surgeon said she must wait at least until summer to allow her to heal from her surgery.
She’s willing to wait. Not only does she know how important the training was for her, but she thinks everyone should take a self defense class.
“(The difference is) completely huge,” she said. “I think (the attack) would’ve gone a completely different direction if I hadn’t taken the classes. He would have taken me or the car or both.”
“It literally has nothing to do with flipping, and I don’t think yelling would’ve done a thing,” she continued. “Most people don’t fight back. (By learning tae kwon do,) you have something you can use to protect yourself.”
