Tell Her I Said Hi

*deep breath*

This post is both embarrassing and funny all at the same time. In fact, when speaking about this subject, I tend to get very boisterous in my hand gestures, and the tone of my voice goes up about 10 notches.

All of that being said, I have my little story to share with you.

As I have mentioned before, on December 17, 2009, we were involved in a car accident in Houston while visiting my brother (Josh) for the weekend. We had just finished up our almost 3 hour shopping trip at IKEA (oh, IKEA, how I love you so!), and the back end of my brand new Honda was packed with boxes of furniture for my brother's apartment. As I have already talked about, the man that hit us was a drunk driver going about 35-40mph coming off the freeway. We were waiting at a stoplight after just coming off the freeway ourselves. He hit us without even tapping his brakes--in fact, we are most certain he had fallen asleep or passed out at the wheel. Anywho, my car sustained no major damage, and Josh's furniture was just fine. Caitlin and Caroline were in the car with me and John, and Josh had Christian in his car in front of us. The accident occurred around 10:30pm.
Literally as soon as John and I got out of the car to check on the other driver and inspect the damage, a tow truck driver appeared. He had seen the whole thing and was there to help us in any way possible. John made the call to 911, and the paramedics were on the scene within 10 minutes.
As for the cops...
They were no where to be seen for an entire HOUR.

Yes, we were all frustrated and tired. The drunk man had become belligerent, and we were STILL sitting on the road. The drunk man's car was not drivable, and we didn't dare leave the scene. We wanted him arrested. There was a gas station literally feet from us, but no one moved. We just sat there...in the company of 2 paramedics and now 7 tow truck drivers (that's a story within itself--they were very cool guys) waiting for the cops...who didn't show up for over an HOUR.
Good grief.

When a squad car finally made an appearance, I was a complete emotional wreck. I had been crying, it was after 11:30pm now, and my oldest child was panicking and crying because she wanted the drunk man to just go away. Nerves were shot to say the very least.

A female cop approached John and advised him to get both me and himself back in to our vehicle. She assumed the drunk man was going to be difficult to deal with, and she wanted us to go ahead and move our vehicle into the gas station parking lot so they could come check out the damage and write up a report. We did what she asked. Roughly 20 minutes later, she and her partner (a male cop) showed up. John and I were bent down looking at the damage to our rear bumper when she approached me. She asked that I get back in to the car and let John deal with everything--apparently I appeared to be emotionally distressed. NOT. I did what she said, though, and sat in the car.
To make a very long story short, she and I did not get along from that point on, and it was not all my fault. She was hateful, rude, and just down right ugly. She even gave me crap over the fact that I was carrying concealed in my purse. Ridiculous behavior from a professional if you ask me.

It didn't stop there--she gave me trouble yet again. She came to my door and asked for the names of all passengers in the vehicle at the time of the accident. Mind you, I had sent Caitlin home with my brother--she was an emotional wreck and couldn't keep calm enough for me to think straight. And it was after midnight at this point. Plus she was tired. Anywho, I began giving the female cop everyone's names--me, John, Caitlin, and Caroline. She stopped writing, looked up at me, and questioned me as to Caitlin's whereabouts. Apparently the female cop did not see her in the vehicle at the scene of the accident, so therefore she "informed me" that she couldn't write down a person's name whom she had not personally seen in the car.
WHAT?!?
Oh good grief!!!
She had crossed the line with me. I was tired of being nice at this point.
Unfortunately, a small cat fight ensued.
Poor John--at the very moment I was being questioned by the female cop, he was coming out of the gas station restroom. He just happened to come up on me mildly freaking out and yelling at the cop who was not shy about yelling back. Thankfully her partner had seen Caitlin in the car, and he advised her to write Caitlin's name down and just go on with the report. She didn't want to back down and admit she was wrong, but after John and her partner made it abundantly clear that she was going to have to, she did. She huffed, walked off, got in to the squad car, and didn't come out the rest of the time.
It was insane!

Fast forward to this past Friday, the 15th of January....

John and I have been working on getting the drunk man's car insurance information for an entire month now. Yes, we know there was a holiday in there, but STILL. The Houston Police Department is not, by any means, on the ball. They have jerked us around for this long, and we had finally had enough. After all, my car hasn't even been looked at by a body shop yet, and we have chiropractic bills that will need to be paid.
John made a call to HPD on Friday morning, and after about an hour on the phone and 3 transfers to different departments, we were finally informed that we would need to speak to the officer who worked the accident and wrote the report if we wanted any information (since it was a felony for the drunk man, they are still investigating it and don't have to release anything to us--grrrr).

Great. So what they wanted us to do was talk to that super irritating female cop?!?!
Not. Cool.

I made John call her, of course. He had to wait until she was on duty (after 10pm Saturday night), but he did get ahold of her.
She was extremely nice on the phone. FUNNY thing here is, she remembered us. Yes, she remembered our entire case.
Oh for the love...
She said things like, "Yeah, I remember you. You were the firefighter. Your car didn't have that much damage, right? Well, I am almost positive I gave you that guy's insurance information--are you sure your wife didn't have it? She was a little upset that night, you know."

Seriously?!? A little upset?!? Yeah, lady. You didn't help that a bit.

After a few minutes of her reflecting on the wreck, she told John that he would need to call the accident division of HPD and request that information from them. If they didn't get it to us by the 21st of this month, she would personally go look it up and give it to us.

Wow, thanks for the help. Back to square one.

So John and I went to bed that night still frustrated and irritated. We would resume the calls to HPD the next week. And of course we talked about the fact that the female cop remembered every flippin' detail of our wreck. John said, "Wow, Mel. I don't know whether to be proud or embarrassed that you left that big of an impression on her." :0) Nothing like a good cat fight to get you in to someone's permanent memory bank, huh.

Around 12:30am on the 16th, we got a phone call. It was the female cop! She had gone to the records department and pulled our file. She was finally able to give us the information on this man that we had been waiting on for a solid month. I was so thankful---so thankful, in fact, that I could have given her a big hug. Ok, probably not. But I was thankful nonetheless.

John thanked her profusely for helping us. She replied, "You are totally welcome, sir. And please tell your wife I said hi."

~Mel