#Transforming911: Jessica and Adam Hopkins

Photo Credit: Colleen O’Connell Smyth / Humans of St. Louis

Adam: Mark was my best friend. He was an asshole, but he was the coolest asshole I’d ever met. We met him right before we moved into our new home. We had gotten some lunch nearby and were about to close on the property. So we decided to have a cigarette and a beer on the steps. Then Mark walked across the street and was like, “You guys buy the place? What did you pay for it?” We told him and he said, “Oh, you overpaid”’ The day we moved in, he got us a case of beer and shared it on our new stoop. The guy was a dick to most people, but luckily he liked us.

Jessica: A few years ago, Mark ran across the street and started pounding on our door in the middle of the day. We opened it thinking he was having a heart attack. He collapsed in our entryway, so we called 911. We were able to get through right away, but it took them half an hour to get here. Mark had heart problems and something called an left ventricular assist device (LVAD) that had a built-in defibrillator. It kept shocking him and we knew we couldn’t touch him or we would have gotten shocked, too. So we had to just watch him twitch on the floor. It was scary. He yelled every time he seized. We thought he might die in our living room.

Because of who he was as a person, after the paramedics arrived and they got it under control, he refused to go with them. He was worried he was going to get stuck in the hospital for a while and knew he didn’t have much longer to live. By that point, he had his LVAD for almost eight years. When you get one put in, doctors basically tell you it will kill you, but it prolongs your life. What sucked was that it could have kept him alive a lot longer, but he didn’t take care of it. He wore this belt with a battery pack and an entry wound that led up to his heart. When he eventually died later in 2020, it was because of the infection to that wound.

Jessica: I always try to call 911 first because I want it on the emergency record. If I can’t get through that way, I’ll call the non-emergency line. One time I called was when our next-door neighbor’s house got broken into. It was about 11 p.m. I saw some people come through the backyard, so I texted my neighbor to see if she was home. She wasn’t but could see the intruders on their doorbell camera. I called 911 three or four times and kept getting a busy signal. After half an hour, I finally got through. They said they’d send someone out, but I waited 20 minutes and nothing happened. So I called back and 20 minutes later, when the cops finally arrived, they went around back and saw some kids running out the other end of the yard. Nothing had gotten stolen.

Adam: Another time our alarm went off, so I called 911 and they told me not to go into the house. It took over an hour for someone to show up. I was pissed. It ended up being nothing, but what if someone really was in our house? The cops were so indifferent when they showed up. While I was waiting on our neighbor’s stoop, I called the non-emergency line. I asked if I could talk to some type of manager. The person on the line said, ‘What’s the issue?’ I told them I didn’t have a real issue, I just had some questions about their protocols. I was wondering how they made decisions on who and how to respond to situations. The person on the line said, “You can talk to me.” When I asked to talk to the manager again, they hung up.

Jessica: Half the time I’ve called 911, I don’t get through. We’re both ex-military, so I feel like whenever I’ve called after hearing gunshots I have to say I’m a veteran or they won’t take me seriously. I know how I sound over the phone. So I feel like they’re probably like, “Here’s another white woman calling,” like I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Jessica: A while back, one of our vehicles got stolen, so Adam reported it to the cops. On our current car, we needed to get new plates. I had old plates from the stolen vehicle, so he put them on it temporarily. I drove to my doctor’s appointment and had just turned my car off in the parking lot. All of a sudden, there were three Jeeps surrounding me and this officer asked me to come out with my hands up. I started bawling. All I could think was, “I’m a teacher. I have a kid. They think I’ve done something. What’s going to happen?” I got out and put my hands up. The officer was like, “Stop crying. What are you crying for?” I thought to myself, “What do you think? I’m terrified. I don’t know what’s happening to me.” But he just kept telling me to stop. The woman officer with him finally said, “These plates came back stolen.”

After things settled down, they explained the protocol. If they had stopped me while driving, they would have stopped us with guns drawn. My questions for that were, “Why? Because you were in fear for your life?”