You Can Love Your Work

by Charmie Gholson

originally published in Current Magazine, June 2004

In 1996, I was managing at Whole Foods Market. I liked my work, liked my co-workers, but I was not a spectacular bakery supervisor.

One day, my favorite teacher from high school came in. I was carrying a story with me, obsessing about it, working on it during breaks. I asked him to read it.  He said sure. I was elated.

He was back the next day. "What are you doing behind this counter?" he asked. "You need to go back to school and make a living with your writing."

"I can't," I told him as I handed a customer their bread. "I'm a single parent. I work."

"We're inundated with sexual assault cases"

That's Captain Terry of the Contra Costa County sheriff department, lamenting about how stretched thin his staff is, regarding both registered sexual offenders and those that haven't yet been caught. He needs more money, I'd bet, and manpower to really police the situation.

Where-oh-where might they get more money?

Why Didn't Costa County Use Thier Armoured Tank To Save Jaycee Dugard?

Police continue to seek answers to how a convicted sexual predator was able to kidnap a young girl and keep her, along with the two children she bore him, in captivity for nearly two decades.

I honestly have compassion for Sheriff Warren Rupf and the department he oversees. This Contra Costa sheriffs department in the San Francisco Bay area is going to have some tough questions to answer in the upcoming weeks.

In the past few years, authorities had several chances to uncover the ramshackle backyard compound where Dugard and her children were kept, a missed opportunity that Sheriff Warren Rupf said was unacceptable. He also promised changes.