Where did the assault begin?

Surveillance tape for the morning of April 26, 2002, shows his car directly behind her car as she was leaving York Road Plaza shopping center, said Kathy Fick.

During the trial months later, the man claimed that he followed her home because he wanted money, Fick said.

"That wasn't true," she said. "He had a huge knife, a condom and handcuffs with him -- and he never touched my pocketbook with $600 in it that was hanging on the door."

She was, as news reports described it, the 46-year old woman who was raped by a stranger in her Wiltondale home, Fick said.

A wife and the mother of two sons, Fick has told her story before. In fact, she has talked it out, "over and over again," she said, explaining how that has helped her.

This time, she is telling her story as the co-chair of Wiltondale's Citizens on Patrol. The group of volunteers who patrol the neighborhood and serve as eyes and ears for the police is one of 24 in the Towson area.

Fick believes any neighborhood that commits to Citizens on Patrol could be instrumental in preventing what happened to her from happening to someone else.

The man who raped Fick was arrested because a woman who lives on Hastings Road noticed his car speeding through the neighborhood that morning and took note of the license plate.

The woman, a friend who was at the time unaware of the rape, had mistakenly thought the driver was probably a Towson High School student, because students parked on Hastings.

The woman had been in a hurry to get her daughter to a doctor's appointment so she only remembered the first three numbers on the plate.

Fick said the information the woman later gave police about the car was the basis for the investigation that allowed police to quickly identify the rapist and arrest him.

He was brought to trial, convicted and now is in jail.

Fick draws on this experience to drive home a point: just one person who notices and reports something that is wrong or something or someone that is not quite right, can make the difference.

That's the idea behind Citizens on Patrol. It's not just an organization, Fick said. It's a state of mind.

"We all need to make a note of anything we see that's suspicious and report it to police," she said. "We all have an obligation to keep our neighborhood safe."

Surviving

It was about 10:30 on a beautiful spring morning seven years ago. Fick was standing in the road in front of her house unloading groceries and talking to a neighbor.

"We saw a man parking across the street and two houses up," she said. He was a stranger to the neighborhood and she watched as he walked down the street glancing up at front doors, she said. We had just received some e-mail alerts about door-to-door solicitors and I was suspicious," she said.

But by the time her neighbor left, the stranger had disappeared.

She was carrying bags into the house, wondering if the stranger was there to visit the au pair who worked for one of her neighbors, whom she knew didn't want the au pair entertaining guests.

"I was calling her at her office," Fick said, "I didn't realize I had the phone in my hand when I turned around and saw him inside the door.

"I went ballistic, that he had the nerve to come into my house.

"I started screaming, 'Get the hell out of my house.' I tried to push him outside the foyer door but I'm 5-foot 4-inches tall and 117 pounds and just a little thing, and he already had closed the main door.

"We were struggling when the phone started to ring.

"It was my neighbor. Her secretary had heard me on the phone screaming at the guy and had told her something was going on.

"But when I pressed the button to answer, he was able to press it off."

Her neighbor later told her she had dialed 911, but since she worked in the city she had reached a city dispatcher, who told her she needed to call county police.

In any case, no police came, Fick said.

The man grabbed her from behind when she saw this long knife to her right at her neck. She stopped struggling.

She tried to ward off the knife by grabbing the blade with both hands -- she didn't noticed the blade was cutting her fingers. As he tried to pry off one of her hands with his free hand, she summoned the strength to push the knife away and out of his grip, and kicked back at him.

She knew how to defend herself, she said. She grew up with three older brothers.

"Unfortunately, I had moccasins on," she said, but the knife went underneath an end table.

She ended up falling on the floor. That's when he reached for the handcuffs.

"There was no way they were going on me," she said.

She was able to get herself back up. She got to the front door and almost had it open, but he slammed it shut.

She was exhausted and defeated.

"I switched to Plan B -- survival," she said.

After he raped her, she was in a daze, she said.

He had told her not to call anybody. She was afraid to look out the window after he left.

But she picked up her cell phone and ran outside. When she called 911 she was wearing only a long T-shirt.

She noticed the front door of the house across the street was open and she ran toward it. That's when she noticed her hands were bleeding.

Critical information

"I am so lucky that it only took a week and police had him," Fick said.

After her assailant sped off that day, he obviously wasn't familiar with Wiltondale's streets, the way most of them lead to the pool parking lot.

A nanny saw him going so fast down the hill before he got stuck at the dead end at the pool that she became frightened.

He had to backtrack to get to the other side of the neighborhood. That's when he raced up Hastings and incensed her friend, who observed he was driving a maroon Toyota before he disappeared.

County police spokesman Cpl. Mike Hill said the partial tag number and the description of the car were "critical" in leading police to the rapist's house in Baltimore City.

The car's owner turned out to be the assailant's mother, Hill said. Police matched up fingerprints he left in Fick's house with prints on the car. His prints were on file because he had applied for a security job.

"That's what ultimately convicted him," said Hill.

Fick's assailant, a 22-year-old man from Baltimore, was sentenced on June 2, 2003, to life with all but 25 years suspended, Hill said.

Fick found it strange when she read his statement to police that it pretty much matched her account of what happened that day.

He admitted the whole thing, she said.

She took an entire year to write her victim impact statement so she would not leave anything out, she said, remembering how her boys, her brothers and her friends, and neighbors all had to be told she had been raped.

In court, "I stared at him as I walked up to say what I had to say," Fick said.

"Afterward, I felt so good when I came out of there. I was a new person. The strength and pride I felt was amazing.

"If it had happened to somebody else, maybe they would not have come out of it as well as I did."

Each April 26 since then, her husband has presented her with flowers, she said.

Fick knows her attacker might never have been caught if it weren't for the information her friend on Hastings Road gave police.

She gets upset when she hears people don't call police when they see something suspicious.

"It just makes me mad," she said.

She knows how much is at stake.

More than 30 residents are signed up for Wiltondale COP's evening patrols. Another 15 do daytime patrols.

Citizens on Patrol is a key venue for fighting crime, according to Janice Arcieri, co-chair of the Towson Area COP umbrella group.

The COP labels and lighted signs on vehicles, and the COP vests and T-shirts serve as visible deterrents.

The e-mail crime alerts that neighborhoods now share are also a tremendous help in keeping people aware of potential problems, Arcieri said.

But residents can be just as effective on their own by being vigilante during their daily routines, Arcieri said.

They can keep an eye out when they walk, bike, drive or even push a stroller, and while they are usually in a hurry when they leave their houses, they can devote a few minutes on the way home to take an extra spin around the neighborhood to check things out.

Hill stressed that anyone who sees anything suspicious should feel free to call police.

"Nothing is too small," he said.

"The community's security and its desire to live without fear are paramount concerns to the Baltimore County Police."

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user comments (1)

user kathyfick says...

Loni, Thank you for the wonderful article. I have recieved many positive remarks about it. Looking forward to National Night Out tomorrow (Aug. 4). Keep spreading the word about everyone keeping their eyes open and calling 911 when something doesn't seem right. Kathy Fick

Posted 11:16 PM, 08.03.09

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