Robbed in a Hotel Room

While working for the little TI group at NASA, I made trips to both Huntsville, AL, and Denver, CO, in relation to the two flight articles I had designed. The Vectorcardiogram device was being manufactured by Spacelabs in Huntsville, and the Blood Pressure Measuring System by Martin Marietta in Denver. These trips were to attend design reviews, tests, and implementation details. (More on this in a different memory.)

The Denver Martin Marietta plant was located southwest of Denver, in the Littleton area. Beautiful site, with mountains and rocks — a sharp contrast from pool-table-flat Houston. We typically stayed in a Motel 6 on West Colfax.

Our typical trip was to fly to Denver in the afternoon, arrive at dinner time, eat, go to the motel, sleep, check out, do business at MM, and then head home on the last flight.

On this night I was in my room at the Motel 6, sound asleep, when I shuddered awake. Something was wrong. By the scant light leaking around the drapery, I could see someone standing at the foot of my bed!

The guy was standing incredibly still. Maybe I had made a noise while waking and he was waiting me out. So I lay there, peeking at him and trying to reduce my heart rate and breathing frequency. He just stood there. Dang. I wasn’t faking sleep well enough.

What were my resources? My pocket knife was in my pants pocket, hanging in the closet alcove. My briefcase was somewhere on the floor. The book on the side table was not very substantial. Fooey.

He just persisted in his waiting game.

I needed to confront him. I composed my speech: “I know you’re there. I am awake. I am going to give you ten seconds to get out of here — no questions asked. After that I am going to turn on the light and beat the living crap out of you.” I had no idea if I could carry through the threat, but HE did not know that. I relaxed, took a breath, made my speech, and began counting backwards from 10.

The guy did not move! He had nerves of steel.

Good to my word, when I reached 0 I turned on the light and sprang to my feet. There at the foot of the bed was a chair with a tall back, with my shirt draped over it. Ideally positioned behind the neckline of the shirt was a modern round lamp, about the size of a human head.

It took me several minutes to metabolize the adrenaline and settle back down to sleep.