Intruder Alert!

 The lab where I work is in a part of town that is a bit sketchy. There are a couple of cheap, pay-by-the-week hotels nearby. Some of the larger intersections in the area have a regular rotating array of panhandlers (I hesitate to call them homeless, because I don't think most of them are). And every so often, you can see someone who is actually homeless pushing a shopping cart mounded with random belongings up the main road.

In October and November, we had a young man roaming around the grounds outside the lab, sometimes peering right in office windows. He talked to himself and waved his hands around. This behavior caused immediate and loud pearl-clutching by the admin crowd. The young man was also seen on a bike in the middle of the street blocking cars. Drugs and mental illness were probably both a factor here. He never approached any person that I knew of. I don't think he even spoke directly to anyone. He would disappear every few days then show back up again. One sunny Sunday afternoon, I was called in to the lab by the director to walk someone from the marketing department from the door to her car, all of 15 feet, because she had seen this young man walking around outside while she was in her office. Why was I called, you ask? I am only about 15 minutes from the lab, in another neighborhood but still pretty close. She decided calling the lab director wasn't enough, and called the police too, who arrived at the same time I did. Of course the young man was nowhere to be seen by then. It was a ridiculously overblown reaction in all ways.

So this sets the scene for yesterday. I heard a commotion out in the lab receiving area, and stepped out to see what was going on. There was a young man walking around outside! He had walked close to the building at one point! He had a knife!

Did he brandish the knife? Did he approach anyone? Did he look in office windows like the other guy? No, he had done none of these things.

I work for the state. The lab is not on private property. It's open to the public. There are no fences or signs or landmines to keep people away. Even so, there was a group of women from the admin side congregated in our receiving foyer, pushing themselves into a panic about this young man.

I decided to deal with it myself before things escalated further. I headed out to see what was going on.

I approached the young man, who did in fact have a knife in a sheath on his belt, and asked him if he needed any help. Turns out he and his friend were looking for clear quartz crystals. 

Yep, they were looking for pretty rocks. 

Little Rock is a fairly hilly town. The hills are cored with very old sediments deposited in an ocean that used to be at the edge of the continent. Old like 450 million years old. Most of the sediments have been heavily altered in subsequent burial, heating, deforming, uplifting, and exposure to where they are now. We obviously aren't at the edge of the continent now. A lot of the quartz was heated up and mobilized with hot water into fractures and cracks, precipitating into lovely crystals. I already knew all of this. I have many examples of the different types of rocks in my own backyard, including ones with cracks filled with quartz crystals. 

The lab is on a small hill which is strewn with fragments of rocks, some of which are pure quartz. 

I chatted with the guy for a bit, suggested he look down by the creek as there might be good rock exposures there, and suggested that he and his friend might not want to wander too close to the building. I said nothing about panicked co-workers. He showed me what he had gathered so far and we talked about quartz for a bit.

When I headed back inside, there was a guy I've never seen before holding the door to the lab receiving area open. I said, did they send you out to get me? Yes, he said. Completely unnecessary, I said. That guy and his friend are just looking for pretty rocks.

Sometimes a little less suspicion and a little more kindness are all that is needed.