INDIANAPOLIS -- Three Indianapolis teens bit off more than they could chew Sunday evening when they tried to rob a Vietnam veteran on the northwest side.
Ronald Blake, 61, says he had just finished doing his laundry and was walking to his car after buying a Powerball ticket near 79th Street and Michigan Road when three males in their late teens approached him and asked for the time.
"I looked at my watch and told them it was about 6:20," he said. "Then one of the other three men that was afoot told me to give him my watch. I just ignored it and continued to walk towards my vehicle, and unlocked the door with my key fob and climbed into my vehicle. As I was pulling the door shut, two of the young men grabbed my door and tried to pull it open."
Blake, an Army Ranger who served with the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions, wasn't fazed.
"While holding onto the door with my left hand, I reached into my belt and removed a handgun, which I have a permit to carry," he said. "I showed it to them through the glass window of the driver's side door. As they ran away from my vehicle, a minivan pulled up and they jumped into the side sliding door of this van and pulled away."
Blake didn't fire the weapon, and wasn't injured in the encounter.
"They just thought they could overpower an old white-haired man in a parking lot, and I convinced them otherwise," Blake said.
It's not the first time Blake's had to "convince" someone not to mess with him.
"I was once accosted on the canal, of all places, one evening," he said. "At the time I was also carrying a handgun. I was approached by two men who suggested I give them my watch and ring and wallet. I just lifted my shirt and showed them a weapon and they left."
Blake says he's glad he was the one the teens approached, and not someone who couldn't defend themselves – but also says he's worried about the paths they're on.
"Police suspected these young men have a history of burglary. What makes me said is that they've gone from burglary, which is a bad thing, to something a bit more personal," he said. "These things, if you can catch them quick, and turn them quick, and get them on a good path, then you can accomplish something. But once they go down this dark path, people tend to get hurt."
Blake knows something about that dark path. He says he grew up in a single-parent home in the Haughville and Stringtown neighborhoods on Indy's near west side. Part of his childhood was spent in government housing projects. Almost all of it was spent in poverty.
"When you're in a single-parent family lifestyle, things can be tough. I for a short time lived in Haughville, and most of the time I lived in The Valley and Stringtown areas of the city," he said. "Rough, gang-style living. We would have our rumbles and disagreements, if you will. It was a … it was a life that, you know, you feel like you're surviving, and not living. But there comes a time where something happens in your life and you move in a different path and you go down that path in hopes of finding a better life. And in my case, it happened to be the military."
He sees a lot of his own youth in the teens who accosted him.
"Poverty does breed contempt," he said. "I think in today's youth, there's a mindset that power is respect. Truly, that's not the case."
Blake has a simple message for those teens: You can turn around before it's too late.
"I would ask them to consider others," he said. "And stop before they go too far and do something that's irreversible and something that ruins their life instead of enriches it."
