Tranquility Respite

By: Caroline Shrednick

"What was that, was that a tongue? Oh my God, that's gross!" I was sitting, watching Ali McBeal with my husband, laughing my head off, and singing to the music of "Some Enchanted Evening." All of a sudden, two masked gunmen enter into our family room and tell us, "Don't move or we'll kill you". Do exactly as you're told or we'll kill you." I looked at my husband, almost surreal, saying, "Is this happening? Is this the television? What is this?" And the men said, "Shut up, don't move."

One of the gunmen walked towards me and pulled off the necklace around my neck, a gift from my husband. They then forced us into the living room, tied us up with neck ties and tied us to the coffee table. The men started to proceed with questions - "Where's all your jewelry? Where's your money? Do you have guns?" Completely in a state of shock I answered, "I only have the jewelry that I have on. I have no gun, I have no money." "You must have money" the gunman screamed. Whimpering, I replied, "We don't have any money. Whatever I have is in my purse."

They proceeded to yank off all the jewelry from my body with force. I said, "No, please, no, not that ring - that belongs to my grandmother, that was her wedding ring! Please don't take my wedding ring", and I started to cry and wet myself. All of a sudden, I go into a dark space. I couldn't catch my breath, my body went limp and my mind went blank. "Please God, help me. Help me see the light."

Some time passed, they kept coming back in the room, saying, "Where is the money? Where are the jewels"? And the conversation continued for what seemed to be eternity - "Oh, is that a picture of your child? Are you Jewish? Who is that? Oh if I'd have known you were Jewish, I would never have done this." Meanwhile the other man stood with his foot on the back of my neck and a gun to our heads. The pressure was so intense due to previous neck surgery.

Finally, after and hour and a half, the ordeal was over. They stated, "Do not move. If you move, we'll kill you. We know where you live and we'll be back. Anyway, this is just an inconvenience; your insurance company will pay for everything." Then they leave through the back door.

For a few minutes my husband and I just lay there trembling. Neither of us can speak or move. Eventually I break free of the ties and crawl to the nearest phone. Unfortunately they had disconnected the phone lines. It takes 10 minutes for me to find my cell phone and call 911. I curled up on the floor and waited to hear a voice on the other end. It felt like I waited an eternity before being connected to an operator. Finally, the police show up with guns drawn, walking around the perimeter of the house. Before entering the house they check the garden for the two gunmen and footprints and but there is no sign of them. They enter into the house, ask us if we're ok and get us safely to the couch. We sit trembling. Lots of questions, lots of questions, lots of questions. At that split moment, I felt that they didn't believe our story. They kept telling us that all our windows and doors were open, yet we never leave our windows and doors open. It even sounded so weird that we had a robbery because nothing was out of place except for shoe boxes in my closet and my lingerie drawer. They interviewed my husband and me separately and, of course, we had the same story. They stayed with us until probably 3 in the morning and they had the helicopters, they had the forensics, they had everybody in our house. It was like a scene for the show CSI. To much avail, they found nothing, not one fingerprint, not one footprint, nothing.

The drama continues. My husband leaves for work the next day, feeling that he would be safe there, and I am left in my house freaking out. Finally I had the courage to call my daughter and best friend and say, "I need you, I need you now. We had a little burglary last night." They both rush over and spent the next few days with me. As I go through all the events, the whole world comes to our home, bringing wonderful gifts of food and the story is just repeated and repeated and repeated. It was unreal. The whole neighborhood comes out - they couldn't believe what happened. My husband seemed able to get back into his routine and go back to work, while I felt completely lost and paralyzed.

The police were involved every day. They kept calling and saying, "Watch out for this person, watch out for your neighbor, watch out for somebody who knows you. Pay attention because normally somebody comes to the crime scene."

That afternoon, I go outside just for a brief minute to get some fresh air. A man stops by in a truck. He said, "Are you OK? I hear you were robbed." I look at this man, frightened. He looked like a bad person, tattoos, bandana, and a beaten up car. I give the information to the police and sure enough, he has been somebody they had been trying to find for five years and although he supposedly had nothing to do with our robbery, why did he show up at my door the next day?

As the next few days passed, I get a call from London that my mother had had a stroke. I leave for London , not worrying about myself, and didn't tell my mother a word. My daughter flew with me and I was feeling very scared and very unsafe. The airport was an out of body experience. I just remember being guided through the terminal. I don't remember how I got to London . But reality hit when I saw my mother and all I could do was put on a fake smile and spend the next week focusing all my energy on her.

When I got back to America , all of my friends had their own opinions about what I should do to feel better. Most of them said, "The best thing you can do is go to work." So eventually I pulled up my big girl panties, put on my lipstick and attempted to face the "real" world. At the time, I ran a huge medical practice in Beverly Hills , with 15 doctors and 50 employees. The first day back I was so scared that I retreated to my office, unable to speak, unable to be me. This once outgoing, together woman had been stripped down to a frightened child. I was there in presence but not in mind. As long as I was there the doctors didn't seem to mind. So I just floated through each day. I was delving into a deeper, darker hole, becoming increasingly anxious, and eating less and less.

I was at the weakest point in my life a few months later, when I actually decided to go on disability because I was so sick. I could not take care of anybody, let alone myself. Every petty issue in the office or daily task seemed irritating and too difficult to handle. I needed to spend time trying to heal myself. I knew I was no good to my family and staff this way. I also needed to find answers to why this robbery had happened to us, so wound up assisting the police department as much as I could with the case.

Through six degrees of separation, a neighbor knew somebody who had been robbed at gunpoint a year before, living in Tarzana. That neighbor, whose friend happened to be robbed, turned out to be one of my physicians, and when I told him how I was feeling one day and how sick I was, he went white as he recounted exactly the same story. I gave this information to the police department and they followed it through. There are no CSI labs in our local police department; they don't even have interlinking computers. So the detective who was working on the original case was now gone and that case was dead. Fortunately because of my neighbor that case now came to life. My detective said, "Hmm, that's very strange, exactly the same MO."

A couple weeks later I'm sitting at a friend's Passover table when the lady across from me reaches over and says, "I'm really sorry about what happened to you. A friend of mine in Palos Verdes had a similar thing. Guess what? They were tied up with neck ties". I proceeded to faint underneath the table. Once I come to and remember what has happened, I ask for the lady's phone number and proceed to call her the next day. She had had an identical robbery to us. Again, I give this information to the police department and they follow through. Oh my God, exactly the same MO.

My husband walks on a Sunday with a friend, every Sunday for the last 15 years. The friend mentions that his cousin who lives up on Mulholland, behind gates, behind cameras, was also robbed at gunpoint two years prior. "Very weird," he says to my husband. "They were tied up with ties."

My husband brings me this news. We quickly realize that we are part of something much bigger. These men had perfect the art of home invasion robbery and had gotten away with it for too long. I start wondering how they selected their victims. How were we all connected? I call the detective again and give him the information. They get hold of Beverly Hills PD and all of a sudden that case is reopened.

This proceeded with three other people. Through friends of friends, I found three other people who had had very similar situations, again passing the information on to the Beverly Hills Police Department. There was so much coming and going and I was interviewed by the police on a daily basis. I organized a meeting in my house to bring all the victims together, of which there were 11 out of 17 at the time. We sat there for hours trying to find a common denominator. Was it the restaurant? Was it the dry cleaners? Was it the MRI Center ?

12 out of the 17 victims were physicians, so I presume the robbers thought I was a physician's wife. How disappointing it must have been for them to find that I was just Mrs. Average, living in a small Valley house, with no jewels, except what I was wearing and some heirlooms my grandmother had given me.

As the months continued one common denominator finally came to the surface, construction. At the time of the robbery I was overseeing the building of a huge surgery center and a physical therapy center. Each of the other victims had either been in construction on their homes, on their street or in their neighborhoods.

Finally, after months with no word, the Beverly Hills Police Department tells us they may have caught the one of the men doing another burglary. For a short moment I felt relieved. However, once in jail, the robber was able to hire himself an attorney for $500.00 an hour. Did he have that kind of money from stealing? Was he well connected? How did he get to me? I was just an ordinary person, living a simple life. All the other people who were robbed were very high profile, very wealthy, with mega jewelry, and mega money. Why me? Why us? Were we a mistake?

Time was passing slowly but I felt no change. I was deteriorating into this black hole. I was beginning to consume me. I had a few doctors watching me, each saying, "If you don't get better, you're going to have to go into hospital. If you don't get better, you're going to have to be on an IV. If you don't start eating, you will be even more ill." It wasn't that I didn't want to eat, I couldn't eat. There was so much acid in my body from fear, from shock, from fright, that I couldn't digest my food. I vomited every time I ate. It burned every time I urinated. I couldn't even go to the bathroom. My eyes were bulging out of my head. And inside I was so lonely, so desperate.

Being in the house all day, alone, was terrifying but there was no where else to go. I didn't want to go out, but I couldn't stand staying in that house. I realized that I needed a place to go to get well, to heal. Was there anywhere? Was there somebody that could take care of me, like I took care of the whole world? I felt very abandoned. Where was everybody? My friends loved me, but they're busy. And they couldn't understand why it still felt so bad because I wasn't shot. My family was far away in London . My husband needed to go to work and keep us a float financially. He had moved on with his life and dealt with the robbery in a totally different way. But big strong me became pathetic and weak and sad and lonely and lost. Having had a career for 27 years and working every day, I didn't even know what to do with myself. I found myself walking around my house in circles. Music was too loud. People were annoying. I felt like I had had a complete body breakdown but my mind was still sharp.

I closed my eyes one day after going to one of my doctors' appointments, begging for someone to take care of me, and said to myself, "I need to open a facility where I can take care of patients and make them feel better after being a victim of a violent crime or having a severe disease. A place where they can get all the love and attention they need.

For the first time since the robbery I had a focus, something to get up for every morning, something to pull me out of the darkness. During the next few weeks I tried to put on paper all the ideas flowing though my head. I wanted this place to be an escape for people who had been though similar situations or life threatening diseases. A place where people could find their inner peace and come out of the dark. A place called Tranquility. The Light. Tranquility. That was going to be the second half of my life. I was going to have a tranquil life. Tranquility became my focus, my everything. I obsessed about it. I wrote about it. I came up with ideas and plans, yet I didn't have a place for it.

Six months had passed since the robbery and I still didn't know if I could go back to work. Back to a place where I didn't feel respected or appreciated. Tranquility was still consuming me but I still didn't know exactly what it would be and since I had never not worked I was afraid to take the risk. ...

... While vacillating over my decision I got a letter of termination from my employer. One of my friends who is an attorney said, "They can't terminate you if you're on disability." And he fought for me as I was too weak to fight for myself. He was able to get me three months' salary as compensation. "Wow! Three months' salary, I could do quite a lot with that". I had also forgotten that I had my jewelry insured and itemized. Who did that? None of the other victims of violent crime had insured any of their jewelry, from their very expensive Van Clef and Arpels diamond necklaces to their Cartier watches, to their 15 and 20 carat diamond rings, nobody had anything insured. Little me had insured my jewelry independently for up to $30,000.00, for which a check came in the mail. I now had $60,000.00, enough money to buy a little house to start Tranquility!

I found a little house for sale that I thought would be perfect but was sure they wouldn't accept my offer. I put in a ridiculous low offer and they actually accepted it! I was able to get a loan for the difference and I spend the next year fixing it up. Every week I would go to Ross, Marshall's, and TJ Maxx, and buy little bits of linen and china and towels. The disability money helped me buy those things as well as pay my car payment and insurance. Fortunately, at that point, my husband really took care of all the other major financial burdens.

Almost a year after the robbery, I seem to have a renewed strength. I went to see everybody I knew, every doctor, every hospital, and told them that I was on a mission. Caroline's on a mission. People were hesitant and probably thought I had gone mad but really I had got it right. I was going to live. I was unencumbered. I was not driven by money but by the passion to live my life every day to the fullest. The robbery served as a wake up call. It had shown me how fragile life is. And now that I had seen the light I wanted to help everyone else. The light, the light. The house that I had found for Tranquility had the most amazing light shining through the window. I called it my healing light. And every morning, I would get up and go to this house, and sit by the light and decide what I was going to do that day. There was no plan, there was no schedule, and there was no time table, just the light. And the light source fills me up, fills up my cup with so much energy that I knew I had to give back to society.

When I went out to the doctors and explained my theories of how I would take care of people, they thought I had gone mad. Patients don't care about chicken soup and love. They just need a place to get well. And I said, "No, you need healing, you need touch, you need love, you need food, you need everything that I didn't have during the period of a year after my terrible ordeal." I felt malnourished, I felt unloved, I felt scared, I felt lonely and I never wanted to go there again, nor did I want anybody to feel that way.

On June 2003, I opened the doors of Tranquility. I didn't know where I was going to get patients from, or where my money would come from or how I was going to do what I was going to do. But it felt right. One day, one of my doctor friends said, "Why don't you take care of plastic surgery patients?" And I was not enthralled. "No, I don't think so. We'll see, maybe, I don't know." He proceed to tell me how many of his patients would have these extensive procedures but then have no where to go and heal. No one to take care of them. This struck a cord with me and even though these people weren't going through life and death surgeries I soon realize that many of them were going though life threatening emotion battles with them self. Some people get plastic surgery to update their look or feel refreshed but others are struggle to find a perfection that doesn't exist. They needed healing from the inside out.

Fast forwarding to today, April 2, 2006 , I can look back over the last three years with total pride. I have made it. It may not be a financial making it, as the standards are in this town, but I have made it not only as a humanitarian, but as a person, and as a woman! I am respected by the whole community for the work that I do. We live, we love, and we laugh at Tranquility. I take care of patients who have had surgery. It doesn't matter what kind of surgery. I take care of patients who have had chemo and are sick and need somewhere to go afterwards. I take care of the community in a way that I wish I had been taken care of, with love, laughter and the human touch. Since the demand for Tranquility has been so overwhelming, I was able to buy my second facility last week! I am blown away by what I have achieved. And I know that this is just the beginning of my story.

Over the last 3 years I have accumulated million stories of women's journeys. They come and stay with me for perhaps one night or two. They tell me how they have been raped and abused. They tell me how they have been anorexic, bulimic or even body dysmorphic. They tell me their sad stories. I am able to listen with an open heart. I am able to cry. I am able to help them and give them guidance. I am able to show them the light. Then they don't want to leave and 2 nights will sometimes turn into a week.

I am already formulating ideas for my next journey, a new beginning for women who have mid-life crises, mid-life emotions, mid-life special needs, that none have met through society. In the world of glamour where I am at, in the world of plastic surgery that I am immersed in, one procedure is never good enough. We never love ourselves. We don't have enough time. Everybody I know is running a million different directions. So many of my friends has been attacked by illness and disease - why? They are all healthy and they all work out. Perhaps they are running too fast and their bodies can't take it. I feel like I have been given a chance to take a look at the second half of my life and realizing that I am worthy! I am worthy of having an affair with myself, I am worthy of being loved, I am worthy of being healed, and I am worthy of healing other people. I only see my cup completely full. If I die tomorrow, I feel that I have done everything that I needed to do, and that was all accomplished in the last three years of my life. I look forward to the next 50 years of my life with strength and courage to help everybody in my power. There is some reason that God keeps sending me these women and men, there is some reason that I am supposed to be doing the work that I do. My story is about that work.

Hopefully now you understand why I felt compelled to tell my story. The events that unfolded after this terrible ordeal have blown my mind and everybody's around me. All the coincidence, all the mystery behind these men and their crimes, and most importantly the light that I found. From such darkness, such fear, came amazing courage and strength. I will never be the same again. I have dedicated the rest of my life to helping other people heal. I have been given a second chance at life and I intend to use it to its fullest!

-Caroline Shrednick

awakening