In an era when it’s become normalized to assume the worst about each other, spew hatred, and threaten violence, serving papers feels dangerous.
One night last spring, my husband and I were engrossed in conversation with our visiting son when we were interrupted by someone ringing the doorbell and pounding on our front door. Startled, I looked at my watch: 10:38. Late for someone to be at the door. Peter bounded up the stairs. I was behind him, but our son Jacob held back on the landing, watching.
Peter flung open the door. An older woman screamed at him about our dogs barking. She sounded unhinged, every other word ‘f***ing.’ She cursed and ranted, got into her car, backed down the driveway, and was gone.
Tense from adrenaline, we dissected the event. Yes, the dogs had been outside on the lower deck all evening. They were animated at times: chuffing, woofing in response to other dogs barking in the neighborhood. We had shushed them but assessed they were neither unruly nor obnoxious, so we didn’t bring them inside.
Peter and I went out onto the deck and listened: Several other neighborhood dogs were barking in the distance. One sounded distressed, its yips plaintive and incessant. Peter took our dogs for a quick walk then brought them inside for the night.
Shaken and a bit embarrassed, I locked up the house, started the dishwasher, and turned off lights.
“She’s lucky you didn’t shove a gun in her face,” Jacob said. “Because people get shot all the time when they knock on the wrong door.”
He’s right. And we’re lucky she didn’t shove a gun in Peter’s face either.
There are so many ways that woman could have, should have, handled the situation. To be fair, we are new to this neighborhood, and she couldn’t call, text, or email us. We were remiss in allowing our dogs to bark after the official noise curfew of 10 pm. But did this give her the right to confront us so aggressively?
We continued this conversation with Jacob over the next few days. We live in a large HOA designed to minimally impact the abundant wildlife in the area. There are no streetlights or sidewalks. The roads are narrow, winding, and heavily treed. Out of respect for our neighbors, we don’t leave outside lights on, keeping with the ideals of a dark-sky community. That woman had pulled close to our front door and left the car’s high beams on and engine running while she screamed at Peter. He couldn’t see her well and described her as “older, with longish gray hair.” He said her vehicle was an SUV with square headlights.
“I guess she doesn’t know what you do,” Jacob said. “Too bad we don’t have her license plate number, because then you’d find out everything there is to know about her.”
There’s no telling what awaits when you approach a house.
“No one can play Ding Dong Ditch anymore,” Jacob commented, wistful about his teenaged years in the 1990s. “People see strangers coming to the door through their Ring cameras and shoot them.” Jacob, who earned his college tuition by serving court papers and working surveillance gigs for my agency, remarked that he was relieved I no longer do this work.
I built my private investigations agency by serving legal papers. These were the first paying jobs I conducted as a PI, and I continued serving papers until July 2018. This sideline led to a rewarding, if not lucrative, career as a criminal defense and mitigation specialist for capital murder defendants. I served appearance and records subpoenas for criminal and civil trials, as well as Summons and Complaints for a variety of civil cases, including divorce, custody, evictions and conservatorship filings, and lawsuits involving credit card delinquency, medical debt, and home foreclosures.
Over the course of several decades, I’ve served more than a thousand court papers. There was always a nagging worry about how a person would respond to the unwelcome news that these documents bring. I approached each job with a smile. Often, if given a chance, I’d talk with the person about the situation. I’d urge them to call the lawyer who had issued the papers, to try to work out a settlement, because a failure to answer could result in forfeiture of property, wages, or custody of their children.
There was always a nagging worry about how a person would respond to being served. I approached each job with a smile. Often, if given a chance, I’d talk with the person about the situation.
People opened their doors to me, maybe because they expected a sheriff’s deputy (not a civilian woman) to serve court papers. Most were gracious, often sharing their hardships with me. They spoke of job loss, divorce, illness, crippling medical debt, and bad luck. I witnessed much grief and shame on these doorsteps and carried their stories back to the attorneys.
Some people were rude, angrily snatching papers from my hands, slamming doors shut, like their bad fortune was my fault. Others refused to touch the papers, thinking that would prevent them from being served, but I’d set them down and drive away with the knowledge it was a good service. I learned much about human behavior and how people react in stressful situations.
One evening in 1999, I had to deliver a court petition for the surrender of an endangered baby. I took my son Danny, then a high school sophomore, along with me. I instructed him to speed off and call for help if something bad happened.
“Just leave you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Drive until you get a cell signal and call 911 for help. Don’t stay here.”
He waited anxiously in the driver’s seat of the car as I presented the document to a man, his wife, and a group of ragtag children on the sagging porch of their derelict farmhouse in the outskirts of Elmore County, Alabama. Their collective body language was tense and hostile, though they remained quiet.
The baby, held by a rail-thin teenaged girl, was clad only in a stinking, filthy diaper. Her father handed the petition to the young teen. She began to read aloud but struggled over the legalese while her parents listened. She shook her head and handed the papers back to me. I picked through the complaint and read aloud the words emergency, neglect, endangerment, feces, malnutrition and failure to thrive. I said the baby had to be brought to court the next morning.
After a bit of discussion, the man said:
“We will be there. Now thank you kindly and get off my porch before I shoot you.”
His wife opened the front door and shooed the children inside. She handed him a shotgun and closed the door. I nodded to the man and walked quickly to my car. Danny drove me home. Later, though shaken from adrenaline and fear, I realized that while nothing bad had happened, the danger had been real. The next morning the man and his wife brought the baby, who was clean and dressed nicely, to the courtroom and surrendered her to family services. While we sat together prior to the hearing, they did not acknowledge me, nor did I greet them.
I often think back to this situation and realize how badly it could have turned out had we not acted civilly towards one another.
Most people are kind and level-headed when faced with an unexpected or worrisome situation. We at least try to use logic to understand and resolve our problems. But some circumstances can trigger fight-or-flight responses, which often result in irrational or bad behavior. Later, upon reflection, we feel remorse and contrition for our actions.
Bullies aren’t “most people.” They don’t try to resolve problems; they sow discontent and violence, exult in disruptive behavior, and destroy relationships, with no fear of consequences. They goad, taunt, lie, demean and threaten, to make themselves feel powerful.
I’ve seen my share of both types.
One July evening in 2018, I arrived at a home in West Jordan, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. I’d been serving civil papers to people throughout the state that summer for a short-term, high-interest loan company out of Ogden. I thought I’d just be serving a few sets of legal papers, but it turned into an ongoing gig as they had scores of “deadbeat” clients. Many had moved, leaving no forwarding addresses, so the company needed an investigator to skip trace and serve their missing debtors.
This was my final stop of a long workday. The neighborhood was neatly kept, firmly middle-class, with pickup trucks and American-made automobiles. I drove by mailboxes, counting down to the address of record. I waved to a rotund elderly man walking a dachshund.
I was stopped by a chain pulled across the driveway. I parked alongside the curb, on the public easement, put the car in park, and stepped out, smiling my best smile, holding the court papers. A large American flag flew from the front of the house, and there were No Trespassing signs erected along the driveway.
A middle-aged man stood behind the chain and held up his hand for me to halt.
“Get back in your car and get off my property,” he demanded.
“I have court papers for your daughter,” I said. “I didn’t want to serve her at work.”
“You’re not leaving those here,” he said as he pulled a gun from a shoulder holster and released the safety. He steadily raised the weapon and aimed it at me with both hands.
“Come any closer and I’ll kill you.”
He steadily raised the weapon and aimed it at me with both hands.
“Come any closer and I’ll kill you.”
I took him at his word, got back into my car, and pulled away.
The man with the dog stopped me down the block. “I saw that whole thing,” he said, with much enthusiasm. “He does that all the time, threatens to shoot people. Thinks he’s a tough guy.”
He had recorded the encounter on his phone, just in case, and prepared to call the police if the man shot me. “I’d have the evidence,” he said.
Somehow this didn’t make me feel any better. I thanked him and drove back to Ogden.
My decision to serve the woman at home, rather than embarrass her at work, put my life in danger. The man in West Jordan was a bully, empowered by a climate of fear and anger that has swept our country, dividing families and neighbors, and shoving aside common sense and kindness.
The next morning, I drove to Salt Lake City and served the woman at work, escorted by a security guard and the human resources manager. I finished my billing and never served another set of court papers again.
Since that day, I have managed to avoid contentious situations, until now.
Peter and I have an adversary. The angry woman, a bully, returned at 9:24 pm one night about six weeks after our first encounter. Our dogs were out on the lower-level deck. It was still light outside. Our windows were open. We had not noticed any barking from Graham and Gouda, although we heard other dogs in the neighborhood. While Peter went upstairs to the front door, where she loudly banged on the door and rang the bell, I crept downstairs, secured the dogs inside, then hiked through the woods, uphill to the driveway. She drove off before I could see her license plate.
Peter was shaken when I came upstairs. The woman, blind with fury, had screamed “I ‘f***ing’ hate you”, and that our neighbors “f***ing hate” us. The invectives, the vitriol, the nasty, ugly things she screamed at my husband frankly scared us both.
Peter got her license plate number. I ran it through my databases that night but didn’t get a hit.
The next day we spoke with a security officer for our HOA, a retired FBI agent. He had an inkling of the woman’s identity but wouldn’t disclose her name. Peter studied maps of the area. We drove the streets, hunting the car with the license tag number we had memorized. We found her vehicle. With her address we researched property records to get her name. I ran a background check and studied her social media posts to learn about this woman.
She is a married woman in her early 70’s. She is a known neighborhood bully. She is a gun owner.
Despite our best efforts to be good neighbors, she will likely show up at our front door again. And we can only hope she won’t be armed.
We must document the encounters for our HOA office and law enforcement to obtain a restraining order against her. We installed a security camera. Daily we consider moving our rifle from a secure area to the closet by the front door, but this seems fraught with risk.
It’s one thing to yell back at an irate person. It’s another to point a gun at her. Would that deter her bullying? Or would that only escalate the situation?
It’s funny how our minds work once threatened: they spiral towards worst-case scenarios.
It’s funny how our minds work once threatened: they spiral towards worst-case scenarios.
After the second encounter, Peter suggested we take her flowers or an apologetic note with our phone numbers, to call when she is bothered again by our dogs. But our neighborhood security officer strongly advised against any contact.
“Anything you do, no matter how well-intentioned, will only escalate the situation,” he cautioned. “People like her aren’t thinking rationally. Do not engage with her.”
In the meantime, I’ve spoken with my closest neighbors, who have assured me our dogs are delightful and not a nuisance. We have another element of uncertainty in our daily lives, an acute awareness that we now exist in a society where it’s become normalized to assume the worst about each other, spew hatred, and threaten violence.
My parents taught me to ignore bullies. I passed this advice to my children. But some bullies cannot be ignored. They won’t go away. We hold our collective breath and wait for the next shoe to drop.
We have reached the end of civility. I worry for my colleagues who still serve papers and interview witnesses — really, anyone whose job is to knock on a stranger’s door. Be safe out there.
A version of this article first appeared on Lehmann’s Substack, The Weight of Words.
About the author:
Susan is a private investigator, criminal defense investigator and capital mitigation specialist. journalist and author. Her latest book, Southern Lies and Homicides: Tales of Betrayal and Murder, will be released in January 2025) by Level Best Books. Read more of Susan’s stories in The Weight of Words by Susan Lehmann.