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| Patricia Michelle Sanchez |
In September of 1991, I began working at a store called "Hit or Miss". The summer had ended, and I was ready to spend the fall and winter working. In the spring when the weather would break, and I would experience my first taste of summer, I would quit. That had been my routine since arriving home from the Army in the summer of 1989. Working in local women's stores had become a norm for me and learning to get along with them was a must. One day I met a girl named Patricia, and my life would change forever. Patricia was a rather tall voluptuous Spanish woman. That day started a friendship that would last the next four years was volatile. She came to work one day in a short black skirt, a leopard shirt, tied with a thick black belt and a pair of knee high boots. I watched her as she walked the floor; amazed that she thought her outfit was stylish. Her large breast and her even larger cleavage was a sign she liked the way she looked. I was always a modest dresser, with a less than modest opinion. I watched the morning, until she came to ask me who would take lunch first. I looked at her with a sly smile, elated at the opening she had given me to speak on her wardrobe and replied, "You can...Vanessa del Rio."
She looked at me with disgust and rolled her eyes and demanded, "Who are you talking to?" My smile widened and I looked her in the eyes and stated, "You, you are trying to do something with that hot outfit." Patricia was Puerto Rican, and had grown up in San Antonio at a time that the Hispanics there weren't required to speak English. She had a very thick Tex-Mex accent that made her very hard to understand when she was angry. At that moment she was very angry. I don't know what she said exactly, but the sum of it was, "You don't talk to me like that!" She walked to the back, had her lunch break and didn't speak to me the rest of the day. The next time we worked together, I begged her pardon, something I rarely did back then. I don't do it much now, because I've learned to curb my opinions with complete strangers. That started a very deep and emotional relationship. I found out Patricia was broken, damaged goods you might say. She told me I was strong, different and loving. I told her that she could be all of those things if she would just believe that she could be.
Over the next weeks, we became fast buddies. Spending hours on the phone talking about of lives, families and struggles. I discovered that she had come here via Lansing, by way of New York and her hometown, San Antonio, Texas. Her mother had died when she was 16 of complications from diabetes at the age of only 47. After that, she had a string of bad luck, bad family situations, friendships and relationships. She had her first son, Patrick when she was 19. After being on her own in Lansing she found her older sister and moved to Detroit. Now she was the new mother of twin boys and lived with them, Patrick and their father in apartment on the lake. She came to work often with baby spit on her shoulder, from burping her two babies. I found out later their were hidden signs of her new life she couldn't tell me about yet. We got into some real "interesting" activities and work that I won't speak of. I'm not positive if the "Statue of Limitations" have ran out on them.
Many of talks surrounded her boyfriend that I knew only by Paul. That's all she talked about most of the time. Paul, Paul, Paul...Being in love myself right now, I kinda of get it. You look for an opening to speak about the one you love so much. When I left that job, Patricia and I remained close. Talking on the phone almost daily, and sharing our lives failures and shortcomings; but she had a secret. One day, her Paul came in to get something from her and I recognized her Paul. I didn't speak, in fear that I would make her suspicious. When he left, I asked, "Oh, your boyfriend is Pancho, Paul, McRick?" She gave me that look again and asked, "Who?" "Pancho, that's your boyfriend." "Yeah", she replied, "His family calls him Pancho. I don't know what that McRick is." The look stayed on her face. I laughed and explained myself, "That's what his best friend, John called him one night." Her face calmed, "Oh, I know John." Now I had a face to the name, and it was a face I knew. The next time we talked, I informed her of what I knew about her Paul.
Paul was once involved with a woman named Carmen. One night while I was at John's house nursing him well from "pink eye", Paul had come over. He sat with us drinking his Budweiser and nodding off, tired from a day of delivering beer. Shortly after his visit began the phone started ringing. His then girlfriend Carmen was calling and called into the night. It was my job after the third call to answer the phone. After Paul's nap, he got up from the couch, apologized for the interruptions and left. After hearing that, Patricia came down really hard on her, and said she would never do Paul like that. He hated Carmen and use to "beat her ass". She swore that she was different and Paul would love her more than Carmen, because she was better and different and she had his two kids and Carmen couldn't have kids. I listened and felt she was being brainwashed by a cheater, but I didn't know the extent of his manipulations. Not until the morning I was awoken at two in the morning by a knock on the door. It was Patricia and she had walked from the lake to my house near Focus Hope. She had on a good coat, but it was the middle of the winter. My mother suspicious of her neediness, time consuming and emotional acts of desperation, only had this to say. "Somethings wrong with that girl."
Paul came to get her later in the morning. He and I spoke and he said the pressures of taking care of the kids, being home all day and him working and not being there a lot was getting to her. He seemed clueless at why she would do something as stupid as walk all the way to my house in the middle of the night. I took his word and explanations, because I knew she was stressed out. Only that afternoon she told me the truth, Paul was abusive and beat her a lot. She said sometimes for nothing and other times for little things. She said she walked on pin and needles when he was at home; which was a on rare occasion. She also told me about the time I tried to braid her hair in his presence and she flinched. She said that when she saw he was about to hit her, she would run, but her long flowing dark hair was more of a curse than a gift. He would reach out and catch her by the hair and beat her in the face with his fist. She said many days she came to work with black eyes and bruises that she covered with concealer. I would spend most Monday's at her house, because that was his long day. She explained that on the Monday's she didn't call me to come over, she was probably recovering from a beating. I was shocked, because as far as my 21 year old mind could see was he was a cheater. The idea that he beat her had never come to my mind. When I told my mother, all she could say was, "I knew it, I knew something was wrong with that girl."
After about a year, she became suspicious of his fidelity and and acquired th codes to his work beeper. she would check his account and shortly after checking it, discovered three different women he was involved with. She called me screaming into the phone, "That...I do everything for him...I take care of his...I went down got food stamps and money for him...We get WIC, and money and his...is going to cheat on me?" Then she ordered me to listen to the messages. I called and heard it all. All those days he said he was going to the Oakland University Library, he was actually visiting women. One woman waited for him on Easter with her son. Patricia was livid and yelled at me over the phone, "He was with me, he was with me...Who does that...think she is? That's my man...I got his kids...He was with me!" I think her lack of English expletives limited her outburst, but she was really angry. I continued to check his voice mail for the fun of it, and when Patricia was working. He had a very active love life, and Patricia wanted to confront him.
I told her not to, and that it would probably just get her ass kicked. She was reeling and couldn't resist and one day she confronted him with everything, including telling him about the voice mail. I don't have to tell you that he beat her for a month. A month that led to the last and final beating that was so bad, she had to stay in the house three days before she packed and left him. She came over and finally showed me the aftermath of one of his beatings and it was horrible. Se was very pale, like the pictures I had seen of her mother. Her shoulders and back were black and blue and purple. Her face was a shade of pink that was more of a red. I saw these little triangles in her back where he had kicked her, while she was curled up on the floor in the fetal position with his shoes on. She was sad, but had to admit he didn't want her. The only reason he wanted her was, because she had the children. She left that day defeated, and I lost one of the best friends I ever had.
My mother wasn't shocked; of course. She said when I told her that he beat her while she was four months pregnant for not answering the phone when he had called, she knew he didn't trust her. He didn't like the type of woman she was, and didn't want her. I could shake my head and say, "Well, he didn't have to beat her!" All he had to do was ask her to leave. "He didn't have to beat her." I would later move form my mother's and into my own place and Patricia would come visit me from Detroit. One day while driving me to work she told me the news. Paul was going to become a Pontiac Police Officer and needed her to do an interview for him. In this interview she would have to declare him a great guy, who took care of her and his children and was a good provider. I looked at her from the passenger seat and with my best attitude asked, "And what are you going to do?" She whined, "Well, you know Lesley Paul family are going to say I'm out to get him, and that I don't want to see him with nothing...I'm going to just do it, give him the boys and go on with my life." She had told me she was going to give Paul the kids, and I had pleaded with her not to do it. Now I understood, he would be getting a good job and although she couldn't be a part of it, she wanted her children to have a better chance at life. She wouldn't do anything but raise them on welfare and could give them little in terms of education and comforts.
I once again pleaded her to rethink giving up her children, and I dared her to do the interview with a good review. As we drove one of their boys exclaimed, "My Dad's going to be a cop, he's going to get the bad guys." I turned and looked that child right in the face and exclaimed a declaration of my own, "Your Dad is a bad guy!" This sent Patricia over the edge with my disgust and scolding and she made a statement of her own. "Don't say that to him about his Dad", and she meant it. I just sat in the car knowing that everything they had said about battered women was true. She was still in love with that man, still protecting him and not making him into the villain he was to her. I just wanted to get out of her car, and I felt sorry for her children. He went on to marry another woman and have twins with her. Patricia lied for him and he got the job at the PPD and changed the whole of my life forever.
The combination of all the law enforcement officers stealing from local store I worked for, Pam Chamber knowing that I knew she was crooked and the final nail in my coffin the input of Paul McDougal. He was the lead detective in my criminal case in 2002 and 2004. He was the one that threatened Steve the most, and took my letters to the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office. To this day he is still working very hard to damage my voice in this city, but his reign is coming to a fast and steady end. In a matter of days all of his help at the PPD will end and those who are willing to help him terrorize me will have to shift. He will no longer have the power or people on his side to continue the deconstruction of my life. I am ecstatic with the thought. After nine years of hell, I will have a chance to tell my story. Moreover, Patricia's abuse will not be in vain. A mean, hateful and manipulative man will be over. A man who hates his mother and women with such disdain that he beats them for nothing. Finding reasons to release his frustrations about life off on them, breaking their spirits and breaking their hearts. Sometimes, I think the time I spent in prison was worth it, because where he thinks he has ruined my life with the help from local drug dealers, city workers, Glenn McIntosh and the court system it is him who will ultimately be ruined by his own disgrace.
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