Just a Trip to the Store, Until Fear Cleared the Aisles

It was a typical Target run--a quick trip to get protein bars, a tube of lipstick, laundry soap and a checkers game for my family’s trip last weekend to the desert. My husband, Kevin, was home putting our two boys to bed, as we were to leave early the next morning.

“Debit or credit?” asked the cashier. I punched in my PIN as a voice came over the loudspeaker: “All customers, please come to the front of the store. Please evacuate the store.”

I looked at my watch. “What time do you close? It’s only 8:25,” I said to the teenage cashier. “All I know is, I’m off at 8:30,” she said with a grin.

Strange, I thought, for a Target to close so early. I was at the new store on Seal Beach Boulevard in Seal Beach and figured it might be because business was still slow.

I approached the exit, where a security guard was waiting by the door. “Excuse me, ma’am, but could you please step outside and stand against the wall? We would like to ask you a few questions.”

A marketing survey, maybe? “Sure,” I replied.

The automatic glass doors slid open, and there they were: firefighters in bright yellow suits and gas masks. They hurried past me into the store, and suddenly, the horror of Sept. 11 stepped out of my television and newspapers and into my town. Firetrucks, police cars and ambulances illuminated the parking lot with flashing lights. A fireman motioned me to the left, where nearly 100 customers and red-shirted employees were quietly gathered along the store’s wall.

“A white, powdery substance has been found in the store,” the store’s security guard told me. “You’ll have to wait here until it can be tested.”

I sat on a small bench and became one of the dazed, Target-bag-toting crowd. Dozens of people held cell phones to their ears, speaking the same refrain: “Hi, honey. I’m being held at Target. Yeah, they found a white, powdery substance ... “

I didn’t have my cell phone on me, and there were no pay phones around. I waited for the woman next to me to wrap up her call.

“Excuse me, but could I borrow your phone? I’ll give you a few dollars for the call,” I offered. “Don’t worry about it, go right ahead,” she said.

Kevin answered at home. “I’m being held at Target,” I said evenly, but found myself choking on the words “white powdery substance.” My 6-year-old, Eric, came on the line. “Where are you, Mommy?” he pleaded. “Why aren’t you coming home?”

I calmly finished the call and handed the phone to its owner.

Minutes slowly passed. I stood up and got as close as I could to the store’s manager, who was talking with the fireman in charge.

“We’ll need surveillance video of that part of the store,” he told her. “And get someone to turn off the air conditioner.”

The manager gave orders into her walkie-talkie. In her left hand, she held papers titled “Biological/Chemical Threat.”

The security guard stood nearby, making sure none of us tried to leave. Police officers watched us from the parking lot. They seem so far away, I thought. Then, I realized: We could be toxic.

The crowd came alive with nervous energy. A towheaded 1-year-old, feisty and up past his bedtime, provided the entertainment. He made a game of breaking free from the group and running for the store’s entrance, as his parents and various strangers (myself included) tried to grab him. A man munching on a bag of pretzels gave a few to the toddler, who likewise handed them to giggling onlookers.

The employee who had found the powder, a woman named Terri, still carried a yellow feather duster in her back pocket. “It used to be when you found a spill, you’d call for cleanup,” she told a co-worker. “Now you call hazmat.”

A half-hour had passed. I casually approached the security guard. “So, do you know where it was found?” I asked.

“It was on a shelf, where the videos are,” he said.

“Did you see it?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t on the floor, like a spill would be. It was on the shelf next to the videos. That’s what worried us.”

“Did she use that feather duster?” I asked, glancing at the woman who had found the powder.

“No. She was about to, but then thought twice, thank goodness.”

The protein bar aisle is rather close to the video section, I thought. Could there be anthrax spores in my nasal passages? Instinctively, I blew a shot of air from my nose.

A few moments later, the crowd hushed as two huge hazardous materials trucks pulled into the parking lot. After getting briefed by the fire crew, some of the hazmat team headed inside. One of them stayed outside and took out a large roll of yellow tape.

“They’re taping us in,” said a woman sitting on the curb. The crowd groaned with disbelief. All eyes fixed upon the blue-uniformed man, who threaded tape around the perimeter of the store’s entrance. Several people got on their cell phones again and made anxious calls home.

Suddenly, a fireman began to shout: “Hey, there’s someone in the store! Who’s in there?” He ran to the glass doors. “Hey! Get outta there! Get out now!”

A startled mother, with two little girls nearly asleep in her cart, slowly exited the building. “What’s going on?” she asked in a thick Spanish accent. “I was wondering where everybody was.”

“We made an announcement to leave the store,” a Target employee told her.

“I didn’t hear any announcement,” she said. It would have been easy to miss, I thought to myself.

I sat on the curb and gazed at the crowd of uniformed men talking in the parking lot. I was trying to read their lips, their expressions. What did they know that I didn’t? Is it anthrax, or what?

Within a few moments, they turned and surveyed the site. One of them met my stare. He looked at me with a strange empathy, the kind of empathy a rescuer would have for a victim.

One hour had passed. Babies began to cry. A girl sitting next to me, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, shivered quietly. New shoppers approached from the parking lot, amazed at the scene. They watched us from the other side of the yellow tape.

A hazmat member exited the store, then reported to a group of Target employees, including the security guard.

“What’s the news?” I asked the guard.

“It’s not anthrax,” he said.

A police officer suddenly took charge.

“You can all leave now. The tests were negative,” he announced. “Before you go, does anyone have any questions?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What was it?”

“Baby formula. They found the identical substance for sale in the store.”

Yelps of relief were heard as the yellow tape was rolled back. Police cars pulled away. Employees high-fived each other and headed back into the store. The customers all hurried to their cars, shopping bags in hand.

I watched the towheaded boy’s father carry his sleepy son across the parking lot. He buckled him into his car seat and gently kissed him on the forehead before shutting the door.

Safe, for now.

*

Christa Chavez is a freelance writer living in Rossmoor.