Well maybe in my mind it was unintentionally broken

It was 1974, and I was seventeen years old. I had my heart set on a white Levi’s denim jacket. Back then, a jacket like that wasn’t just something you wore—it was a statement. It made you feel cool the second you put it on. It was sharp, clean, and perfectly “in style” for the era. I had saved up for weeks, and when I finally had the money, my best friend Glenn and I headed to Two Guys, a discount department store.

For anyone too young to remember it, Two Guys was one of those early “big discount” retailers—kind of a predecessor to what we think of today as Walmart, Target, or even Costco. It wasn’t fancy. It was a no-frills warehouse-style store where you went for bargains, long before online shopping and self-checkouts became normal.

The second we walked in, I made a beeline for the clothing department. And there it was—the exact jacket I had been dreaming about. I slipped it on, looked in the mirror, and it fit like it was made for me. I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed it and went straight to the register to pay.

And that’s when things got weird.

There was no one there.

In those days, stores like Two Guys didn’t always have one big checkout area up front like we’re used to today. Each department had its own register, right in the department. The clothing section had its own counter… except the cashier was gone. Not “busy with another customer.” Gone. Completely deserted.

No bell to ring. No sign telling you where to go. No employee in sight. Just an empty register and silence.

So I stood there waiting.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

I looked around and didn’t see a single person. Glenn wandered around looking for someone and came back shaking his head. Nobody. Not a soul.

Now I’m standing there with the jacket on, money in my pocket, and I’m getting frustrated. I wanted to buy it the right way. I was ready to pay. But how do you pay when there’s no one there to take your money?

That’s when Glenn muttered the fateful words:

“Let’s just go.”

I hesitated. I really did. But my seventeen-year-old brain started doing mental gymnastics. I actually convinced myself that this wasn’t stealing. I had waited. I tried. They weren’t there. In my mind, it almost felt like a loophole.

So we walked out.

We made it all the way into the parking lot before I suddenly felt a grip on my belt so strong it nearly stopped my heart.

A man—a huge man—had grabbed me and lifted me right off the ground like I weighed nothing.

It was security. Plainclothes. And he had been watching the whole time.

In a matter of seconds, my “cool jacket moment” turned into a full-blown nightmare.

They took me into a little security office under those harsh fluorescent lights, and the officer sat me down like I was some hardened criminal. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. He calmly told me that at seventeen, I could be charged as an adult.

That one sentence hit me like a brick.

Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about the jacket anymore. I was thinking about police. Court. A record. My father finding out. My life being ruined before it even started. But there was something else that scared me just as much. Back in the 1970s, retailers subscribed to third-party companies that kept lists of people they caught shoplifting. If your name made it on one of those lists, it wasn’t just this store you were done with. Your name could be circulated, and you’d never get a job in another retailer or any company that handled cash or merchandise. My entire future could have been destroyed over one stupid teenage decision. I don’t believe companies like that could even operate today the way they did back then, because of legal and privacy issues, but in 1974 it was a very real fear.

I felt sick.

I sat there sweating, staring at the floor, realizing that what I had just done—whether I meant it or not—was still breaking the law.

Then something happened that I have never forgotten.

The officer looked at me for a long moment and finally said, “You waited at that counter. That tells me something. I think you just made a stupid mistake.”

And instead of calling the police, he let me go.

He didn’t have to. He could have ruined my life with one phone call. But he gave me a second chance.

And I can tell you this… that fear and humiliation burned itself into my brain. I never stole again. Not even close. I didn’t want to ever feel that feeling again for as long as I lived.

Years later, I found myself on the other side of the table. I had worked my way up in retail, and by 1988, I was running a large retail store as the manager. One evening, the head of security called me down to the office and said, “You’ll understand when you get here.”

When I walked into that little back room, I saw an older man sitting there, handcuffed to a bar on the wall. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. His eyes were red, and he looked like he was about to fall apart.

He asked me if I was the manager.

I said yes.

Then he told me something that stunned me.

He was a judge.

Not a retired judge. Not a former judge. A sitting judge.

And he had been caught shoplifting.

He wasn’t making excuses. He wasn’t trying to talk his way out of it. He was ashamed. Completely humiliated. He knew exactly what was at stake. If this got out, it would destroy his career, his reputation, and his life.

The amount he had taken was enough that normal policy would have required us to call the police. And once that happened, there was no undoing it.

So there I stood, looking at this man, and I could see the fear in him. The same fear I remembered from that little security office back in 1974.

And suddenly I wasn’t a store manager anymore.

I was that seventeen-year-old kid again, standing at an empty register, making the dumbest decision of my life.

I stepped out and called my boss and explained the situation. He asked me what I thought we should do.

And I didn’t even have to think long.

I told him, “I think we should let him go with a warning.”

There was a pause, and then he said, “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

I went back into the room, unlocked the cuffs, and looked that man in the eye.

“Don’t waste this,” I told him.

He nodded, and I could see tears forming.

He walked out, and I never heard from him again.

But I like to believe that second chance changed him the way my second chance changed me. Maybe there will be a kid like I was someday in his courtroom that he will give a second chance to.

So yes… I broke the law once, unintentionally, “in my young mind anyway” when I was seventeen years old. I didn’t wake up that day planning to do something wrong. I just got caught in a moment where my teenage brain tried to justify something that wasn’t justifiable.

And I learned something from it.

Sometimes the biggest lessons in life don’t come from punishment.

They come from mercy.

And I’ve never forgotten the gift of that second chance.