Protecting the family

For several years my wife had a Girl Scouts council in the capital city of another state.

One night we went to a restaurant. After we were seated and had menus to study, my wife leaned toward me and said, “That is (name)'s daughter and his mother at that table.”

A surreptitious glance showed a girl of 9 or 10, a woman in her late 40s and two men who were in their early- to mid-30s. I said, “Who is (name)?”

“He’s a big drug dealer,” my wife said. “Right now he’s in state prison on a 10-year sentence. He’s been there three years.”

She then explained how she knew the drug dealer’s mother and his daughter.

“He wanted his daughter to be a Girl Scout, so his mother organized a troop. She’s one of troop leaders.”

Everybody in the capital knew who (name) was. And, every troop leader in the capital knew his daughter was in Girl Scouts. And, everybody agreed that you don’t hold a child’s parentage against her. You don’t deny influencing a girl’s present and future life because of her father’s transgressions.

The way things worked, a drug organization did not go away just because the leader was in prison for a while. He continued to run his organization. And should somebody else decide to try to take control through truly despicable means, that is why the daughter and the mother always traveled with at least two aides, who drove the girl to school and picked her up, who were around somewhere during troop meetings, and who accompanied the daughter and her grandmother to dinner at a restaurant.

It was a system that worked.