I swear, she makes my dear mother (who had reasons to be paranoid after a guy who tried to rape her and swore to kill her vanished off the FBI's radar) seem normal. My mother was convinced that if I didn't move into a house with an alarm or kept my shades down, I'd be stalked and raped. And yet, she didn't assume every van or begger was out to get us. As I said, my mom had a reason to be paranoid (and reading books by John Douglas and Ann Rule didn't help). LKH just makes me think she likes drama.

The van "following" her on a street where she already said parking is at a premium, could just be looking for a parking spot. After all, it passed her. Just because there's a guy in it doesn't automatically mean it's a kidnapper. And the panhandler on the street? I see a lot of them where I live, and I bet every city has a lot of them. You either give him your spare change or ignore them. Not that big a deal. I've only had one case where a panhandler got dangerous, and know what we did? We went to the cops around the corner. Problem solved. (and dangerous, jsut so everyone knows, was just him calling the women of the group nasty names. Nothing physical)