The Time I Almost Got Arrested

Saturday, April 17, 2021

Yesterday, I was running, as is typical for Friday mornings. I have a race on May first, so I was training for it by doing a two mile warm up, two miles at goal pace (under eight minutes per mile), followed by a one mile warm down (I am from Wisconsin, and now live in a Southern state… it was my father's idea to call a cool down a warm down, and now I have a hard time calling a warm down anything else). I was in the middle of the second mile of the actual workout, running down the side of the highway (because there are not many places besides the highway to run on if you want more than three miles and live where I do). I am in front of the gas station that my family has affectionately deemed the 'stinky store,' the turn I take to get off of the highway and back to my house is in sight, maybe a football field's length in front of me.

With only one hundred yards before I make my turn, a cop drives past me. Five seconds later, a cop is on the other side of the road, lights on, speeding down the street. Oh, cool. There's a high-speed chase or something, I thought to myself.

Then the cop made a U-turn.

Uh-oh. They're looking for someone, and they think I'm him, I thought to myself, realizing that this was the same police that had just passed me. Later that evening, I discovered that that was not far from the truth, though it was not the reason she "pulled me over."

For location privacy reasons, I will not go into too much detail about what happened, but, after arriving home from work, Dad excitedly told us about a high speed chase that took place around 2:00 P.M. yesterday. A man was in a high speed chase, fled to my state, hid, and, yesterday, was discovered and sped away again. He turned down the street that I was approaching (again, this was at 2 P.M., I was running at 9 A.M.), and crashed about two hundred feet after passing the cul-de-sac I live on.

After parking on the side of the road in front of me, I was still trying to determine if she was stopping for me or not. When she stepped out and began walking towards me, I slowed to a walk, paused my Garmin, and we met in the middle.

"Hey," I said upon reaching her. The first thing I noticed was how much taller I was than her. Being confronted by a police is already unnerving, but being confronted by a police I towered over and most likely could outrun just made me uncomfortable.

"Is everything alright?" she asked.

Carefully choosing my words before speaking, and making sure I did not sound twelve when I spoke, I said, "Yeah, I'm fine. Just runnin'. I'm homeschooled," I added.

She spoke a series of numbers into her walkie talkie and returned to the conversation. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen, ma'am."

"Date of birth?"

"October 2, 2003."

"Full name?"

"Caleb James Pinnow."

"Pinop?"

"Pinnow."

"Bento?"

"Pinnow."

"Pinnow?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said, relieved that she had finally heard me correctly.

"Caleb Pinto," she said into her walkie talkie. I smiled and shook my head. Should have told her "Like minnow, but with a 'p,'" a phrase our family has become popular for using.

"Well, I thought you were nine or ten running from school or something," she explained. "I just saw the back pack and your face and got worried."

I almost took a step back from shock. I did not know how to feel, looking down, literally, at the police officer who said that she thought I was nine. I look that young? I dislike the sound of that. All of this put together made me laugh a little. In a friendly way… not in a mocking way.

After that, she told me that I was good to go. For the remainder of the run, I was trying to figure out if I lowered my voice on purpose, or if it was part of my attempt at acting calm and collected, which became easier as I realized how funny the whole situation was, rather than serious. Had she thought I was the man she was most likely looking for, I probably would have been more nervous.

At work, I told Brad, my favorite coworker, what had happened. I made sure to start with "I almost got arrested today."

Later, he told Donna that I had almost been arrested. When asked why, Brad replied with, "Because she thought he was black."