They’ve Got The “Kind Strangers” Thing On Lock

I was quite the road-tripper post-college and very notorious for locking my keys in my car — my very old, no-frills, manual 1991 Corolla with crank windows. So notorious was I that, after going home for Christmas, my parents made me half a dozen extra keys to hide or give to more responsible people. Problem solved, or so you would think.

I was driving back to Utah from Arizona and stopped at a small gas station just south of the Utah/Arizona border. It was 3:00 am and I just needed one more tank of gas to get home, so I got out of the car and habitually locked and slammed my door. Just as it clicked shut, I realized that I had just locked my keys in the car.

I had no cell service, I was six hours from family and friends going either direction, and there were no other buildings for at least twenty miles. This Hitchcock-esque gas station was the only place with lights and people. So, I did the only sensible thing any twenty-year-old solo female traveler would do: I walked into the convenience store and said, “Help!”

Immediately, the only people there — the owner and his cousin — sprang into action. Apparently, the cousin had just relocated there from California looking to get a fresh start. Lucky for me, because he said he had lots of friends who locked their keys in their cars so he had a lot of experience breaking into cars. This sweet, wonderful, large, heavily tattooed man spent over an hour working to get into my car. And when he finally managed, neither he nor his cousin would take any money from me, not even for the hot chocolate they gave me while saving me from my own mistake.

I never saw either of them again on subsequent road trips, but I hope they both got every break the universe could offer them.

I wish that was the last time I’d gotten myself locked out of my car. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even the most dramatic. But it was the sweetest.