The Shock, Horror and How to Survive

Background
 
Chris and his wife are retired Brits in their late 70s. They are permanent residents in a rural area, 5,000 feet high, above Grecia Costa Rica. They retired here 14 years ago.

A few weeks before the events described, a European friend, a widow of similar age, was pistol whipped, kicked unconscious and left for dead in a pool of blood on the other side of their town of Grecia. She was hospitalized for two weeks. Her smashed legs and joints may never heal. Now, she struggles to walk with a stick. Her pictures, TV sets and ornaments were wantonly smashed to pieces. All the sofas, soft furnishings and beds were slit open.
 
The Shock
 
It is 5.30 in the evening, dusk.
I am at our desktop. Just outside the office, my wife is putting a CD on the player for our pet bird. Simone loves opera.

“Chris! I heard a loud bang.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”

She screams. The primordial horror of a loved one’s fear cuts like a freezing knife into the brain.  I whip my head round. Two masked men in black have thrown her to the tiles, still shrieking.
My heart races, things go into slow motion. I must do something.

Before I can move two more thugs pinion my arms, roughly pushing me to the floor. They brandish automatic pistols in my face, shouting,
“Kill! Kill!!”

 Their intimidating threats are in limited English. My responses are in poor Spanish.

My wife is still shrieking in terror, thinking of our European friend. One rams a boot on her face, banging her head on the floor. 
Don’t they realize we are too far from the next house for anyone to hear?
They tightly bind my wrists and feet with plastic zip tie. Terrified for my beloved, I struggle to get up. A pistol is pressed to the side of my head.

“Don’t hurt my wife, I’ll give you everything you want.”
“Money! Money!
 I try to rise to show them a hiding place, straining to see my wife. They shove me back down hard, waving their pistols.

“Stay on the floor!”
They are clearly pumping adrenaline, but their eyes don’t look drugged. Maybe we can get out of this alive.
They toss aside the tin box that held some cash.

“Not enough. More money! Where’s the safe?”
I show them as they drag me around to another room. The ties cut harder into my hands and feet.
“Keys! Keys! Kill! Kill!”

Totally disoriented and confused I cannot help them. They have thrown keys all over the place from my bedside drawer.
 
They take some convincing that I do not know where the safe key is.
“The safe isn’t strong. Lever it open,” I say.
 They break it open, scooping the contents into a backpack.
Hoping for sympathy, I try desperately to look like someone’s grandad. I tell them I have a pacemaker. Wincing and gasping, I clutch at my chest. I played in youth theatre when I was young.
They soften. Maybe they saw the huge number of pills and the blood pressure monitor on my bedside table, or perhaps the family pictures. Two throw me on the bed and put a pillow under me.

“Please. Water,” I croak.
They fetch me water. My beloved is tied to a chair.  The zip ties cut into her ankles and wrists. I beg them to bring her a drink. They do, replacing the duct tape over her mouth. The bonds painfully restrict the blood flow to our hands and feet.
When they are not looking, to comfort her I wink and give a thumbs up, as far as I can with the ties.
We are going to get out of this.
The are getting antsy and obviously want to leave. Ivy is freed of the gag to explain the car and gate controls. They tell us to stay put for an hour, claiming that they will be watching the house. Then they are gone, slamming the front door.   

There is no way they’ve left anyone behind.

As soon as I hear no noise, I struggle to get a hand into a bedside drawer. Awkwardly, I open a small Swiss Amy Knife, cut myself free and do the same for my wife. She squeals in pain when I pull the plastic tighter so as to get the blade underneath.

I run out of the gate in the same flowing Japanese robe I wore during the assault. I run to the next house about 80 yards up the hill. Banging and rattling their big gates, I shout for help. Luckily, they let the weird guy in.

They phone the cops. Details of our missing car are shared. The police arrive within a few minutes.  We go back to our house. My wife makes tea. Normally we don’t take sugar. We sure do now.

Investigators from the judicial police, ’The OIJ’, arrive a while later. They list missing items and take our statements. The next day they return to take fingerprints. Why? The perps wore gloves. They interview the neighbors.
 
A TV crew arrived outside while the OIJ were with us. They filmed the drama from through the gate. We did not speak to them.

The incident received a wholly undeserved 20 minutes on the local lunchtime news. They repeated the same pictures, and wildly exaggerated and speculative commentary, multiple times. In the evening there was an edited repeat.

We were amused that the TV reporter described us in Spanish as ‘Ancianos Britanicos’. In the UK the Ancient Britons were half-naked barbarians, painted in blue woad. They failed to stop the Romans from defeating and ‘civilizing’ them. In a way this was appropriate as we had no chance of stopping the bandits.

The locals were furious. Irresponsibly, the newscaster said that there are many old, rich people and widows living on our street. These vulnerable people might become targets from now on.
 
Good news
 
The OIJ told us that the car was discovered in a muddy field about two miles away.   My cell phone, the car keys and two laptops were still in it. We think that they ripped out the dashcam in case they were filmed. The car and electronic devices might have had trackers.
 
Immediate Aftermath
 
We were amazed and delighted that the thieves did not smash up the house or the items we gathered on our world travels. If you have to be robbed, try and book these guys.

More blue bruises and painful aches emerge in the next two weeks. Old people are fragile. If you fall off a horse, you get back in the saddle. In the next two weeks we gradually resumed our separate exercise regimes, occasionally gritting our teeth.

In England they say, ‘He was famous in his own lunchtime’. We were celebrities in our barrio for a few days. Everyone waved to our car as we drove past.

Friends and neighbors expected us to leave Costa Rica because of our experience and the wider escalation of drugs and violence. We discussed our next steps and decided to stay. We love the lush tropical vegetation, many animals, and colorful birds we can see from our patio. The views over the forest, the valley, and the mountains in the distance are sublime. We have many friends here.

We were advised by some to turn our place into a fortress. Naturally, vendors of security systems proposed elaborate and expensive schemes. The street below us sprouted many gate cameras within a week of the incident. The neighbors seemed more worried than us that the gangsters would return.

Living in a bunker with all the things necessary to get in or out is unattractive.  We did make some changes to our security, primarily making it impossible to see through the gates and adding further cameras.

We decided that a safe is just a way of centralizing valuables so the robbers can scoop them all up in one go.

Our biggest problem was the time, travel, and slow process of getting replacement driving licenses and a residency card for me. We were told this would be done by January, then maybe by July. Notoriously. the wheels of Costa Rican bureaucracy turn exceedingly slowly. With great effort on our part and the help of the ACRC, The Association of Residents of Costa Rica, we completed the process in mid-February.
 
Pura Vida
 
Ticos use this expression when asked how they are, or just as a greeting. It is best translated as, ‘Life is great’. They may be suffering even when they say it. We see it as positive thinking. There is no point in dwelling on the past, or on what might happen. We intend to enjoy the good things about Costa Rica and savor each day as it comes.