Hi, My Name Is Frank and I’ll Be Your Robber This Evening

There is a picture in our photo album from last summer. It’s a typical vacation shot of a group of grinning people captured on what appears to be a joyous occasion.

But there’s one clue that all was not perfect that evening: Standing on the far right of the photo is a San Francisco police officer. He’s not smiling. Don’t ask me why the rest of us are. Less than an hour before that photo was taken, we had been held up at gunpoint.

The San Francisco leg of our weeklong trip was to be the antidote to a wilderness adventure in the Sierra. We had faced down bears in the forest and camped in a rustic lodge. Now we were ready for a more luxurious, sophisticated urban environment. Instead of hiking, we’d take taxis and cable cars. We planned to enjoy fine dining: dim sum in Chinatown, pasta and cappuccino in North Beach. We booked a room at a luxury hotel in Union Square with stunning views of the city, Alcatraz and the bay.

Our first day there began with great promise. The weather was fabulous; San Francisco’s customary summer fog had lifted, and everything was warm and bright.

My 14-year-old daughter Meera and I met up with visiting friends from L.A., Zach and his mother, Becca, and spent the day exploring the city with them. We tramped up the hill to Chinatown, then headed across town to the Haight-Ashbury district.

By the time we had finished shopping in the Haight, we had that golden, relaxed, everything-is-great glow about us that a vacation is supposed to induce. We were having so much fun together that the four of us made plans to meet for dinner with two of Becca’s nieces. Since they are locals, we left the choice of restaurant to Grace and Jessica, who suggested a place called the Garibaldi Cafe. They touted the food as good, the prices reasonable and the reputation up-and-coming on the hip city restaurant scene.

Grace picked us up at the hotel about 8:30 p.m., and the six of us, packed like sardines into a four-seat subcompact, sped through the darkness down a maze of streets. Somewhere way south of Market Street. (I was unclear exactly where; as a passenger, I’d turned off my navigational compass for the evening.)

We arrived in a quiet neighborhood with few pedestrians or traffic on the streets. In this rather deserted, dark setting, the lights glowing from inside the restaurant created a warm and welcoming beacon. I quickly ignored the vague doubt about the area that had wiggled into my head. Relax. We’re on vacation.

Inside the restaurant, an old-fashioned bar took up one section. Our party was led to a table tucked into a corner of the restaurant section. Well-dressed patrons were scattered at tables, and the quiet hum of dinner-table conversation filled the room.

We ordered and were chatting amiably about a variety of light topics: cats versus dogs; the gentrification of neighborhoods like this one; where each of us was when the last earthquake hit. I sipped a tall glass of a Belgian beer; we all sampled a delicious appetizer of shrimp quesadillas.

*

Suddenly, everyone around us dived under their tables. Earthquake! I thought. A pitcher of water and ice went skittering across the table. But nothing else was shaking.

Then I looked behind me, and, in horror, dived under the table too.

There, standing at the back of the room, was a tall, anorexic-looking man dressed completely in black, from knit cap down. A spot of light caught a glint off his black handgun. Apparently, instead of the warm spinach-and-chicken salad I’d ordered, the main course was going to be, well, held up.

What happened next is recorded in my memory bank in vivid but slow-moving fragments. Somehow I felt detached from the danger of a real-life armed robbery. I could have been sitting on my couch at home, watching an episode of “NYPD Blue,” as if this were happening to someone else.

From under the table, I saw a disembodied hand reach down and grab the purse off Grace’s chair; she’d been sitting next to me. I avoided looking up at the robber’s face, for fear of making eye contact and attracting attention to us.

“Put your money on the table,” the tall skinny dude barked to everyone in the room.

Somehow I managed to surreptitiously extract my Visa card from my wallet, throwing the card under a chair before tossing the wallet on the table. (How would I pay my hotel bill, I worried, without my credit card?)

Then we waited, six people squeezed under a table that seemed too small to protect us. Jammed and wrapped around each other, body part to body part, it was like we were playing a punishing game of Twister. In a whisper, Grace apologized for taking up too much personal space. As softly as I could, I asked: “Where’s Meera? Is she all right?” And a soothing, calm voice, Becca’s I think, came from under the table: “She’s with me; she’s fine.”

Then I worried that my right foot was sticking out from under the table and would be shot off.

From outside came a muffled yell: “C’mon, c’mon. Hurry up,” followed by a blaring staccato honk of a car horn, hammered obnoxiously by an impatient getaway driver. Oddly, this voice was reassuring. This would be over soon, I thought.

Then, another disembodied voice: “It’s OK, everybody. You can come out. They’re gone.”

I peeked out, saw a waiter standing where the robber had been, and we slowly started to untangle ourselves.

*

And there we stood. What’s proper etiquette after an armed robbery? Shake hands, then say “Congratulations, you’re alive”?

We hugged. We chattered, giggled or joked nervously. Meera twirled in little circles, blowing off energy. Jessica went over to the bar to trade stories with other victims.

The bartender had been hit hard on the head with a gun by a second armed robber. Others had purses or wallets taken. Someone said that our gunman had dropped his gun at one point.

Then I checked our table. My wallet was there--untouched! Nothing had been taken, not the money, the traveler’s checks, the ATM card. In fact, at our table only Grace had been cleaned out.

They got “$3 and maxed-out credit cards,” Grace said, putting on a stoic face. She is still suffering the effects of having her purse, her keys and her identity stolen. (In the two months since the robbery, $3,000 in false checks have been written against her checking account, and her IDs have been used to open credit card accounts.)

The restaurant’s staff rallied around their customers. Our waiter came by to check on our table. The manager offered everyone free drinks, but we declined. Somehow a California Chardonnay didn’t seem like the perfect complement to a holdup.

The police arrived soon after the gunmen left. They took statements. I was useless as a witness--all I could remember was a tall, skinny guy--but the police offered soothing words of advice, and even called cabs for us. And one posed for photos with us.

While all this had been going on, amazingly, in the kitchen the chefs were still cooking. Before we left the restaurant, our waiter handed us two large paper bags. No charge. Inside were our dinners, precisely as ordered and neatly packaged in Styrofoam containers. Free takeout!

We ate our hard-earned takeout meal in our beds, watching a Disney movie. My salad was good. Meera pronounced her pasta dish delicious, and declared that even armed robbers wouldn’t keep her from going back to the Garibaldi.

After all, they say lightening doesn’t strike twice in the same place. Nevertheless, the next night I chose another restaurant, in Union Square and up three long flights of stairs.

*

Rangachar is an editor in the Travel section.