We just got home (now it's almost 4am). I had my normal session with my psychologist this afternoon & spent quite a bit of time working on packing up my mothers home. My husband always comes with me because I just can't be in her home alone.

We started our 1 hour drive home around midnight. My husband was driving cause I was too tired. As we were driving up the freeway towards the cutoff for the freeway to take home, there was a car close to us that cut us off from getting into the lane we need to get into. We ended up on the truck route to get to where we were going. I noticed that the car that cut us off pulled in inback of us, & followed us to our freeway. That isn't really unusual.....alot of cars take that route. As we continued up the freeway, the car seemed to stay fairly close to us but we figured it was just someone else from our where we live. About 20 miles up the freeway, the car passed us for a short while & we were in back of it. Then, it slowed down & the driver was flagging us out of his window to pass him. My husband pulled way out into the carpool lane to avoid getting close to him.....(at that point, thoughts were whether he had a gun or something). It just seemed wierd that this driver was having that much interface with us on the freeway. We continued driving home & at that point, I followed his headlights in back of us in my passenger side rear view mirror. We got to the Avenue that we take off the freeway to get home. He was blocking us from the slow lane, so my husband speeded up to make the offramp. We watched the guy follow us. This was more coincidence that usual. As we drove down that Avenue toward the street we take to our home, the car continued to follow us. As my husband drove down the street, he decided to pull a quick U turn & go back the way we came from & the car continued to follow us. My husband has been working as a guard through one of the guard companies here in Lancaster & he decided to drive to his company & call them from my cell phone & get some help. I was suggesting the sherriff station, but the guard company was closer. We pulled into the companies parking lot & parked in front of the door. The guy in the car pulled in the parking lot behind us & got out of his car. All he did was walk up & down the sidewalk & never came close to our car. My husband called the guard company & only dispatch was inside the building to they called for the help of the guards on patrol & for the sherriff's. Needless to say, the sherriffs are always slow at arriving & one of the guards showed up first. He confronted the guy & he wouldn't leave. Once we had someone else there, we got out of the car to find out what was going on. The guard told the guy to leave & that he was traspassing on the company property...& the guy just got real strange & wouldn't leave. He told us that he had a friend with the same kind of car I have & that he wanted to make sure she got home safely.....but he wouldn't get into his car & leave. The guard continued to tell him to leave & the guy just refused.....the guard got out his pepper spray & the guy still wouldn't budge. He ended up spraying the guy who resisted him & they finally took the guy down in the middle of the street. (& no, the sherriffs still hadn't arrived). There ended up being 3 guards holding him down & they finally got the hand cuffs on him. It was probably 45 minutes before the sherriffs arrived & we found out that the guy had just been released from jail 2 days ago. He told us he had been arrested for starting a fight but told the sherriffs that he had been in jail for ID Theft. The sherriffs got him into their car.....arresting him for trespassing & for a 5150 (danger to self or others).....since he didn't actually do anything but follow us. I was listening when they were questioning him & it sounded like there was either mental illness involved caused from his use of drugs or the use of drugs came from his mental illness. We found out that he lived about 40 miles in the other direction from where he started following us & he followed us for about 40 miles. The sherriffs checked his car & found some drug stuff in it along with reliese papers from the jail.

Part of me feels sorry for the guy.....the sherriffs asked if he had been Dx'ed with schizophrenia.....after him telling them that the Viet Nam war was because of him. He was born in 1971...after the Viet Nam War was over. He told them that the only drug he took for his problem was weed.......who knows if he was on drugs or not while driving.....he was all over the road around us, but never ran us off the road.....so they couldn't take him in for that. It is very sad that people like that who desparately need psych help fall through the cracks or maybe just refuse to take the drugs they are supposed to, but he really does need more help than just jail. However it is very scarry to realize that people like that are out in society, not knowing what they are really capable of doing to people like us who are just peacefully driving home.

My husband & I had been talking about the fact that he might be following us, but we never called 911 while we were driving because we weren't actually sure about what was happening until we turned off the freeway. I was suggesting that if he really was following us that the sherriff station would be where I would drive to. I guess in reality, my husband's solution was the best because there he could be considered tresspassing where in the sherriff station parking lot, he wouldn't have been trespassing.

I think from what the sherriff's said, they were going to take his down to the county psych place in Sylmar (back where he started following us). It is where they can hold him for the 72 hours at least & hopefully they can get some help for him if he is open to help.

Sometimes I feel like I have a sigh hanging around my neck saying strange people land here. After catching the the home care RN stealing my mothers ID theft & having the Los Angeles Police come to the house & accuse me of abusing my Mother, then having a strange person following us for over 40 miles to home....I want to get rid of that sign around my neck.......I don't need anything more to make my anxiety attacks worse than they already are.

What more strange things can happen in my life......I thought living through the trauma was enough.

Debbie