Note: OP, I suggest you read this sooner rather than later, because I may heavily revise it or delete it within the next day or so.
Here's a story that happened to me that I'm going to try to keep short, since it's a long-ass story. I'm going to be vague about certain parts for reasons that will become obvious.
So, in high school I met a girl I'm going to call Mary. Mary liked me a lot, but I had some mental issues and I really liked Mary and didn't want her exposed to that stuff, so I kept distance (later would be diagnosed with bipolar, anxiety, clinical depression, and some other stuff). We maintained a friendship though, that was actually more than that though we kept things kind of platonic. Mary's brother and sister were involved with some sketchy people.
I graduated high school, and started going to community college. One day, I was outside cleaning my car out in my driveway when I see someone weird walking down the street. Now, it's worth mentioning the neighborhood I lived on is a weird kind of rural/industrial lower middle class neighborhood. Seeing people in saggy, gang-banger clothes was about as common as seeing people dressed as cowboys, and both were fairly common.
Dude I saw walking down the street was dressed in a badly fitting suit, minus the jacket. It hung on him way too loose, like you'd expect a cancer patient or Auschwitz prisoner to look after trying on their old clothes. And they were wrinkled to hell. He had a shaved head, and an old beaten up briefcase. He has piercing blue eyes that you can see from all the way down the street.
He's looking directly at me. And he looks "off," so I pretend I'm ignoring him, but when he gets near my house he says, "hey, excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you but could I ask for a favor?"
What's up?
"Well, I could use a ride, if you don't mind."
Where you headed?
"Just up to the egg ranch, up the street a ways."
Sure, that's fine, I'm headed that way anyway.
I had to pass there to get to school. The egg ranch had a reputation, though. See, the egg ranch was owned by the very same sketchy people that Mary's siblings had become involved with. Like a modern-day Shakespearean tragedy, Mary's sister had become romantically involved with one of the higher-ranking gang members who considered the egg ranch their territory, and consequently spent most of their time their doing meth. Mary's brother, on the other hand, had been friends with someone who ran a very large marijuana growing operation.
It was pretty successful, until the leader of the aforementioned gang found out about it. This guy was not a nice guy. He had beheaded two guys that refused to do "business" with him, only a year or two prior. Guys Mary's brother and his friends had known.
So when Mary's brother's friend was approached by the gang-leader, who said he wanted to buy his product, the guy wasn't too happy about it, but he knew he couldn't say no, so he agreed.
By the way, I didn't know any of this until years later. Anyway.
As you would have predicted, the gang leader does things square for a month or two before finding the guy and saying that he wasn't paying for the pot anymore, and instead, he was going to take whatever he wanted for free, and the other guy was going to give it to him or he'd kill him. So he agreed, because what choice did he have?
Then he ran. And he ended up living at Mary's house. Her family took him in, without really knowing much about the details of why he was there.
One night, the gang-leader and a lackey or two broken in, they'd found him. The gang-leader (who had a name that I don't care to reveal) was holding Mary's brother's friend up against the wall by his neck, with a gun to his head. I imagine he was saying stuff to him. Mary's brother woke up, and saw this, and grabbed his gun. He shot at the gang members and hit two of the guys that were there, paralyzing the gang-leader, from the waist down.
Because of this, the gang leader was caught by police. Mary's brother testified against him, and he went to jail. And he was very unhappy about this.
So, I finish cleaning out my car, and the guy gets in may car, and we start heading out. Then he asks if I can stop at a liquor store real quick.
I'm a little sketched out, but I say sure, and he explains that he wants to grab some cigarettes. Then, on the way there, he explains that today was his first day out of jail, and I think
fuck.
But as it turned out, he was a polite, friendly guy. He offered me one of his cigarettes, and bought himself a 40, and offered to get me one too, and asked if I minded before opening it in my car. Even if I had, I dunno if I would have said so, but fuck, I dunno, if I'm brave enough to give sketchy strangers a ride then maybe I'd be brave enough to ask him not to drink in my car if I cared.
So I get him to the egg ranch, drop him off, he thanks me and I head out.
Three days later, Mary's brother is killed at the egg ranch. He had gone there to meet a friend in a panicked frenzy, knowing that the gang was after him. Someone had told him over the phone that his friend was there and that the gang wasn't. When he got there, he found the opposite to be true, and he was shot by the son of the gang-leader, and at least one other kid. He died a few weeks later in the hospital.
Around 3 or 4 years later, I get out of a really bad relationship, and I get back in touch with Mary. Her relationship is ending as well. We start talking more than we ever had in the past, and it is going really well. Eventually we make things official.
Not long after, we get engaged. We're currently married.
5 years after the death of her brother, a trial is held for the two kids responsible for his death. I go to the trial a few times, to be supportive of Mary and her family in this rough ordeal. At the trial is where I learned most of the information I posted above.
At the trial, I also saw someone that looked familiar. There that day in court I got goosebumps, and I have them again now as I write them.
The sketchy hitch-hiker was up there on the stand, the only person to testify against the gang that wasn't a member of Mary's family. I knew him by his face and his blue eyes.
The day that I dropped him off there, he had never left, and stayed there doing drugs until the day of the murder. He had gone to jail for going to a police station with a shotgun, trying to kill cops. He took over 10 bullets in return, and so they called him "Lucky," instead of his old gang-name. Because of his time in jail as well as his near-death, the gang allowed him to "retire" as a member. He was still involved with them, but no longer "active," which I guess means he didn't go shoot anyone anymore, he just hung around.
He told the court about how Mary's brother had been intentionally ambushed. That they'd been waiting. Who pulled the trigger, and where. How her brother was tricked into going to the furthest back room of a house, having to pass in front of a group of the gang-members, and having to flee back past them on the way out once he caught on.
He explained that he had to live in hiding, because his testifying meant that they would kill him if they saw him. He explained that he was testifying because he didn't want that life anymore. That he had been working as a carpenter.
I'd told Mary about the hitch-hiker, long before that day in court, because it was such a weird experience already. There, that day in court, I had to whisper to her, "THAT WAS THE GUY! That was the guy I gave a ride to, the sketchy guy, remember? That was him."
Years before we ever dated, years before we married, years before I ever suspected I would be more involved with Mary than as a friend, I gave a ride to the man that would help make sure her brother's murderers went behind bars, at his own peril.
Mary's family is still very worried about going anywhere near the territory controlled by the gang. They are safe where they live now, but they would not be safe in that area, and the vendetta is still active. I do not know if I would be safe or not, I don't know if they know I exist. Either way, I will likely remove some of the story later to make this less recognizable.