Lessons From a Kidnapping -- Thinking Bigger

   Despite the passage of over three decades, it’s not something easily forgotten.  It was a warm and pleasant day in the summer of 1988 when I was notified that a close family friend, the wife of a banking executive, was kidnapped and being held for ransom. It was a story that dominated the local headlines in print and on local television when it first happened, then as the events progressed from kidnapping to finding that she was brutally murdered “execution-style.”  There was, however, much more to the story.
   
   This event was very personal to me, as the kidnapping victim and her husband were good friends with my wife and me. In the years before she was kidnapped and murdered, we spent time and often vacationed together.

   My friend was the branch manager for a bank while his wife was a full-time mother. They had recently purchased a new home, and their future was promising until that fateful summer day when everything was turned upside down with a ransom call to the bank where my friend worked. As I indicated, the story ended very, very badly.  Had it not been for a few very astute people “thinking bigger” and looking beyond the headlines and media narratives, it could have ended even worse.

   The suspects were ultimately caught, prosecuted, and imprisoned. They were a husband and wife kidnapping team who lived near my friends. T ...

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