Minnesota Prairie Roots

THE PAST FEW DAYS have been more than a bit unsettling for Minnesotans.

Here’s why:

• A 14-year-old girl from tiny Fairfax is kidnapped while on her morning paper route and then sexually-assaulted in a cemetery. She escapes her captor, who has since been arrested and charged.

This happened in rural southwestern Minnesota, an area I know well because I grew up in Redwood County. After I left home and graduated from college, I worked as a newspaper reporter in Gaylord, several small towns away from Fairfax along Minnesota Highway 19. I drove through Fairfax every time I returned to my hometown.

Later, I worked for The Sleepy Eye Herald-Dispatch in Sleepy Eye, even closer to Fairfax. My northern coverage area reached to Fort Ridgely State Park just south of Fairfax.

Somehow, when you know the places involved, a serious crime like this really hits home. And the fact that my cousin Dawn and her family live in Morgan, near where the girl was found, makes this crime even more personal. Read my May 5 blog post to see how Dawn’s family was impacted.

Knowing southwestern Minnesota as I do, I can only imagine how residents of these closely-knit small towns are feeling—shocked, fearful, angry, less trusting, shaken…

• Tuesday evening a SWAT team gathered on the street by my Faribault home. As I watched, the SWAT vehicle and a contingent of squad cars turned right and proceeded up the hill. I later learned that they made a meth bust three blocks away.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time law enforcement has descended upon my neighborhood. A decade or more ago, they were searching for a knife used in a murder two blocks away.

Yes, I lost my small-town innocence years ago. In the 25 years my family has lived in this house, we’ve called 911 several times. Once, my husband and I awoke to the frantic screams of a woman calling for help in the early hours of a cold January morning. An ambulance hauled one person away.

Another time a young man came to our door pleading for help as he was chased by a pack of young men. And, yes, we saw his pursuers and worried that they would burst into our home.

And then there was the time we, unknowingly, sold a car to a member of a Twin Cities gang. Police later found a gun, involved in a shooting, in the trunk of the car, still registered to us.

Long ago, I lost my trusting innocence.

• And then, just several days ago, a Minnesota Department of Agriculture employee reportedly threatened to blow up a Minnesota state office building, the place where my eldest works.

• On Saturday, Maplewood Police Sgt. Joseph Bergeron was shot to death, still buckled in his seatbelt, en route to investigate a reported car-jacking.

Yes, these have been unsettling days for me, and for many Minnesotans.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling