PART 2 — THE WINDOW
Ms. Navarro held her little boy tighter and pulled a folded parking ticket out of his diaper bag.
This past March, she said, her voice shaking, I made the worst mistake of my life. I ran into a shop in Pacific Beach and left my son strapped in his car seat. Just for a minute, I told myself. It was eighty-five degrees. A car like that becomes an oven in no time.
A parking officer walking her route saw the baby through the glass. She called 911, and when she understood there was no time to wait, she broke the window with her ticket machine and got him out.
The woman Richard called the most hated person in San Diego had shattered a car window with her own hands to pull a baby out of the heat, and that baby was sitting right there in his mothers arms.
I never even got her name, Ms. Navarro said. I was too busy holding my son and crying. Then she looked across the yard at Tina. You brought me today to network, and I walked in and saw the officer who saved my boy. She is your sister.
The backyard went silent. Richard, whose face was on a bus bench, set down his Corona.
Tina just handed out the churros and said any officer would have done the same. But Ms. Navarro shook her head and said not any officer did. One did.
My sister ruins peoples days for a living, the lawyer had joked. One hot afternoon she ruined a car window and saved a baby. That is the ticket on your windshield.