Saundra Washington always knew she had a knack for sleuthing. She was nine when she found mom’s car keys, saving the day as they tried to get to grandmas. She figured out how to put all the class playground equipment back into the basket just right, allowing her to confidently report that two balls were missing and needed to be found before they went back into school.
Her secret? She has two. First, never give up until the mystery is solved, she said. And second, always look with your hands and your eyes.
Her mother had taught her the latter. When she was little, not big like the 11-year-old she is now, Saundra would sometimes get the mom frown for failing to find something badly needed. Like the time mom was on a tall ladder trying to get the Christmas boxes down from the attic and the dangling light bulb went out.
“Go get the flashlight by the back door, please” mom directed her. “It’s on the bench.” But when Saundra returned, she had no flashlight to shine to help mom from the attic. “It’s there,” mom yelled down. “I saw it this morning.”
“I can’t find it,’’ Saundra replied. When her mom was able to wiggle through the attic in the dark and climb down the rickety wooden staircase, Saundra was embarrassed by the result. Frowning a bit at Saundra, mom trotted back to the back door only to find the flashlight on the bench where it always belongs. Saundra had hung her coat on a hook but dropped her scarf on the bench. The flashlight was right there.
“Always look with your hands and your eyes,” her mother said, returning to fold down ladder and her attic task.

Saundra learned her lesson for sure.
Now, Saundra is always at the ready to solve mysteries, whether at home, school, or in the neighborhood. Everyone can solve a mystery, she knows, but not everyone has Saundra’s patience.
Today, she has a big mystery to solve. She wants to help her neighbor, Mr. Anderson. Mr. Anderson always tries to shovel snow off their sidewalk before mom gets home from work. But when she came home from school this afternoon, no snow had been shoveled at her house or Mr. Anderson’s.
“Is Mr. Anderson away,” she asked her mom. “No, Saundra,” she replied. “It seems someone has stolen his new red shovel.” Saundra was sad. Who would do that to a nice person like Mr. Anderson?
“I’ll find it,” she told her mom with great confidence. “You can try,” her mom said, “but Mr. Anderson has looked, and looked. He just told me he was going to go borrow one from a neighbor.”
“Hmmm,” said Saundra, slipping on her coat and boots. “I’ll be back before dark.”
“Be home in time to wash up for dinner,” her mom yelled back.
Saundra pulled on her wool mittens and wrapped a scarf around her neck as she closed the door behind her. I’ll never give up, she thinks, mom taught me that. Mr. Anderson was outside just beginning to use a borrowed shovel.
“Hello,” she said. “Mom said your shovel is gone. What happened?”
“No idea,” Mr. Anderson said. “It was on the porch where it always is. I started to shovel and put it down for just a minute to go back inside to get a scarf. The wind was blowing mighty hard. When I came back out, it was gone!”
“Where did you leave the shovel?” she asked. “Right over here,” he said, stepping to the edge of a sidewalk by his driveway.
Saundra looked down. The fresh snow blanketed most of the lawn, but she could see a trail of footprints from the driveway edge crossing between the two houses and disappearing. The snow was falling, and she could barely make out that next to the footprints, another set of footprints seemed to trail along but they were much messier.
“Did you flatten that snow,” she asked him, pointing to a flattened block of snow several yards down the path of the footprints? “I didn’t even notice it,” Mr. Anderson replied. “There is a lot of snow out here tonight and I need to get back to cleaning my sidewalk. Tomorrow I’ll need to go buy a new shovel.”
“Don’t go to the store yet,” she said to Mr. Anderson. “I have a hunch.”
Saundra walked away from Mr. Anderson and down the path of the footprints between the houses. Snow was beginning to cover her hat and get in her eyelids.
Along the way she spied something brown sticking out the snow just an inch. Look with your hands, Saundra remembered. She bent over. “A stick!” she aloud said to herself. She stretched out and wrapped her red mitten around the stick, pulling all 18 inches from the ever-thickening snow.
Now she was excited. She started to run beyond the houses, into the back yard, and to the alley behind the houses. Should she go left or right down the alley? Her sleuthing skills told her left for sure. Was she right? Did her hunches guide her?

She ran past one garage and then another. Then, she skidded to a stop.

A dog, a big dog, was running towards her. He was brown and probably as big as she was. He was eyeing the stick in her hand and barking furiously. Then the dog skidded to a stop. A chain-link fence stood between Saundra and the brown dog.
“Hello bruiser,” Saundra giggled. “Did you lose this?” She raised the stick into the air and gave it a toss, sending the dog into furious fun as he chased it down in the snow. His lost toy was found.
Beyond bruiser, her neighbor, Billy Yancey, was hard at work building a snow fort. Beside him a red snow shovel was laying on the ground.
“Hi Saundra,” he said, looking up. “This is perfect packing snow so I just had to make a snow fort while I could. Want to help?”
“Billy,” Saundra replied, “did you take Mr. Anderson’s show shovel? He’s been looking for it.”
Billy stopped.
“I just need it for a little bit,” he said. “Bruiser and I were going for a walk, and I got this idea to make a snow fort. Then, there it was. So, Bruiser and I borrowed it. I was going to return it. I think I just got excited.”
Saundra could see the sun had set. It was time to go home.
“How about we take the shovel back to Mr. Anderson, Billy? She asked. “You should say you’re sorry to him. He was going to go buy a new shovel because he has to shovel his own sidewalk.”
Billy hadn’t thought about how borrowing the shovel hurt Mr. Anderson.
“Come on Bruiser, let’s go,” Billy said.
Together the three walked back to Mr. Anderson’s house, Billy tossing Bruiser’s stick along the way.
“I guess there’s lots of ways to have fun in the snow,” he said to Saundra. “But one of them shouldn’t be to take someone’s stuff without asking.”
Mr. Anderson was so happy to get his favorite shovel back, that he didn’t even yell at Billy. But Billy knew he was wrong and apologized. Mr. Anderson thanked Saundra for her sleuthing skills and told Billy he remembered building his own snow forts. “Maybe I can see how it turns out,” he said. But he reminded him, always ask permission before borrowing something in the future.
For Saundra, she kept her commitment, making it home just in time for dinner.

“Time to wash up, dinner’s on,” her mom said.

Just another sleuthing day for sensational Saundra, she thought as the bubbles multiplied in her hands. ❦

About the Author

Katherine Schweit is an attorney and retired FBI special agent who created and led the FBI’s active shooter program after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. She the author of the FBI’s seminal research on mass shootings, “A Study of 160 Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013,” and was part of the crisis team responding to shooting incidents at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Pentagon, and the Navy Yard in the Washington, DC, area. She is the author of Stop the Killing: How to End the Mass Shooting Crisis and a sought-after world expert in mass shootings, incident response, and crisis communications. She shares free best practices and research through her website and regular newsletter found at katherineschweit.com. She is the author of the dual titled book, A Simple Guide to the Second Amendment/How to Talk About Guns with Anyone, and teaches a course on the Second Amendment for DePaul University College of law. In her latest book, Women Who Talk to the Dead, she marries her inside knowledge of forensics and investigations with compelling storytelling to give readers unprecedented access to the messy business of digging up cold case murder victims. This true crime narrative delves into the cost of discarding part of humanity. A former journalist and Chicago prosecutor. She lives outside Washington D.C. where she continues to write, teach, and advocate for a better tomorrow.

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