They shouldn't have messed with Tripp
,
Comments (7) 
 |
He's a cab driver who used to be homeless, but now runs an organization called Care of Poor People. A couple of times a year, around Thanksgiving and Easter, Richard G. Tripp organizes a huge potluck and clothing giveaway. Radio stations help out, as do churches and other random folks who volunteer and make donations. Sometimes a band plays. To hang out with Tripp that day is to see people have a few hours' relief from hard lives. Since he started doing these events, organizations in other cities have followed his model.
Now imagine his face all jacked up, swollen with a black eye and concussion.
Over the weekend, Tripp picked up a couple of fares at Harrah's Casino. He drove them to 30th and Montgall. There, he says, "They tried to kill me."
"I'm in the middle of the street and I put the cab in park," Tripp recalls. "They say how much, and I say $20.10, which was on the meter. I started to turn around and they hit me with something."
Not quite knocked out, he kept his head down until he heard the passenger door open. "About that time the driver's window broke and they were trying to come in the driver's side. I grabbed the gear shift and was lucky enough to pull it down. I hit the gas and got out of there."
Tripp's been robbed before. In fact, his harrowing story of life on the streets, of bad decisions, near death and redemption, and finally committing himself to helping those less fortunate is chronicled in Please Underestimate Me, his self-published autobiography.
"It's one thing when it's a robbery, another thing when they come inside the car -- they either want to kill you or hijack the car. I knew what they were trying to do," he says. "I saw that look in one's eyes. The cops told me how lucky I was."
 |
| Care of Poor People's Spring 2008 event |
Tripp says his guard was down -- partly because he'd picked up the men at Harrah's, which is well-guarded by video cameras, and partly because the men seemed especially skilled at deception. "You know, I've been doing this a lot of years and I didn't get any gut instinct from them. It's almost like they'd done this before -- they did nothing to make me think anything was wrong."
He says it cost him a hundred bucks to get his window repaired, but he's back driving again. And he's hoping to get photos of the suspects (he says they were black, about 25) that he can pass around to alert other cab drivers.
"This black eye pisses me off -- that I let somebody get that close. I always thought all these years of preparation taught me. But the way things are getting now, you can't slip up. You have to be on top of your game or you'll end up in the morgue."
Here's wishing him a speedy recovery -- and some serious atonement and a sudden, radically different path for the thugs who messed him up.
Comments (7) 
Write Comment
Email to Friend
Print Article
