No Regrets

common sense in the duo. Still, he eventually came to believe in Don Quixote’s cause—even as Quixote challenged windmillsand a flock of sheep, thinking them giants and invading armies.
    So Sancho Panza was an apt name for a crisis center that was an island of calm and compassion in the midst of the craziness that often came to them via phone calls, drop-in visits from people on the edges of society, or lawmen who brought in disturbed patients.
    Kari Lindholm was used to the chaos in the county-funded facility on Ohio Street. The staff served all manner of people with problems. “We had a telephone hotline, some group therapy sessions, and we were there to help people. Sometimes it was abused women who had run away from domestic violence; occasionally, we counseled rape victims. Basically, anybody in crisis could call or come to Sancho Panza.”
    It wasn’t unusual to have sheriff’s deputies bring clients in, so the counselors had the sense that they had armed backup nearby when they needed help. Lots of people with large and small problems simply walked into Sancho Panza on their own. “Clients” who were admitted as in-patients were often emotionally disturbed, but not so much that they were considered dangerous.
    The center was located in a big old house, just around the corner from a halfway house where a few residents with criminal convictions who weren’t deemed dangerous enough to go to prison were housed. Staff there were also available to the counselors at the crisis center. Security wasn’t a problem, or at least it didn’t seem to be until the night of September 20.
    Sancho Panza had eight beds, a huge kitchen space, a waiting room with old but comfortable couches and chairs, and offices in the back of the house. Two counselors at a time—preferably a male and female duo—werealways available. Kari Lindholm routinely worked the “graveyard shift” with a male partner. Her husband, Ben, worried about her but she assured him that she was perfectly safe.
    And then on Saturday night, September 20, Kari’s regular male coworker called in sick, and Shelly Corelli* agreed to fill in. Shelly and Kari fielded the calls and the people who were brought in or dropped in. It was the first day of autumn, and the moon was full. Anyone who has ever worked in law enforcement, hospital delivery rooms, crisis centers, or other facilities that deal with emergencies knows full well that it is not just folklore that says the fullness of the moon and the surging of tides that come with it have a great deal to do with “craziness” and the unexpected in human behavior.
    It was a deceptively lovely night: Eucalyptus trees filled the air with their pungent odor and the heat of the Napa Valley day cooled rapidly. Summer was over.
    The two women overseeing Sancho Panza on the graveyard shift were constantly busy, running between the phones and the counter as they dealt with humans in distress. Cops came and went, the resident clients were uneasy, and Kari and Shelly had no breaks. As soon as they handled one situation, another seemed to pop up.
    It was three-thirty in the morning when two men walked in. They said they had been on their way to Reno 120 miles east, but they had run out of gas. “We decided to wait here,” one of them said, “until it gets daylight and the gas stations open.”
    Both men looked to be in their midthirties. One of them was very small, not more than five feet, seven inches tall, and he couldn’t have weighed more than 125 pounds. He had straight black hair that he’d slicked back. Kari noticedthat his teeth needed attention from a dentist: They were dirty and crooked. He didn’t say much.
    The other man also had black hair, but his had been cut professionally. He was nearly six feet tall. Kari noticed that he had numerous tattoos, but the only one she recognized at first was a teardrop beneath his left eye. He told them that his name was John and his friend’s name was Mike.
    John mentioned the name of one of their counselors, and seemed familiar with Sancho Panza. Kari didn’t recognize his name or his face, but assumed that he had probably worked with someone on the day shift. He was quite talkative, seemingly at ease. Shelly thought John looked familiar, and vaguely recalled that he had been an outpatient at Sancho Panza. When she looked at him more closely, she realized that he had been in on prior occasions to talk with some of the counselors. She didn’t know what his