Neighborhood watch
What: Neighborhood Watch Meeting for the Greenfield Subdivision
When: 1 p.m. Saturday
Where: Mayfield Elementary School library, 3325 Burbank St.
MIDDLETOWN — The night Vivian Hart’s door was busted in and her possessions were left strewn across her home, she had no one to turn to but God.
After learning her home had been burglarized in December, Hart said she came to the stark realization that she did not know her neighborhood — her quiet little street in the Greenfield Subdivision. And she did not know her neighbors.
“I said I have to do something. So I got up and walked across the street and knocked on the door of my neighbor,” she said.
Door after door, Hart said she learned stories of similar break-ins, of neighbors being home in their beds while someone stole their TV. But more importantly, she came to know the people she has lived next to for more than 30 years and learned that they, too, were afraid.
People such as Linda Sorrell, who’s lived on the corner of Greenwood Drive and Carriage Street for 23 years.
She remembers when Greenfield was “the good part of town” for its brilliantly colored model homes and porch-sitting neighbors. It’s a far cry from the neighborhood now where she had to fight off someone she said attempted to kidnap her grandson’s friend.
“You need to teach your kids to be safe but do you need to teach them that their life is in constant danger? Are we there?” Sorrell said, her voice cracking with emotion at the memory.
Leah Workman said after a break-in at her home on Ellis Way, she and her husband use a piece of wood to jam all their doors at night against intruders. She’d been considering the need for a Neighborhood Watch program when Hart came to her door.
So many of her neighbors shared similar concerns that Hart said she felt “God is sending us out together.”
With the help of Middletown police Officer Ken King and her new-found comrades — Sorrell, Workman, Theresa Fisher, Jacque Kuzman, Tanya Helsinger and Rudolph Pringle — they’ve organized a new Neighborhood Watch. The first meeting is Saturday.
It’s their hope the program will help neighbors get to know one another while deterring crime by calling in concerns immediately to Middletown police.
“We have a choice: get to know everybody or else everyone is your enemy,” Sorrell said.
“And hopefully it will run drug activity and others committing crime out because they will know someone is watching,” Helsinger said.
For more information on how to start a Neighborhood Watch, contact King at (513) 425-7734.
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