My friends in college used to call me “Bad Luck Meagan,” a nickname I earned thanks to a near-hilarious number of brushes with misfortune: stolen iPhones, parking tickets after five minutes of expiration, debit-card information theft — you get the idea. I thought I had left the moniker behind following graduation in 2015 — but after being robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight in the middle of Montrose last month, no more than 100 feet from a quaint coffeehouse and surrounded by million-dollar condos?

Yeah, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

In fact, none of it ever would have happened if I hadn’t set off in the wrong direction on the way back to my car — the first strike of bad luck against me. I had gone to Campesino Coffee House on Waugh at Missouri to work on an upcoming Houston Press feature and, feeling satisfied with the roughly 2,000 words I wrote that afternoon, left happy. I walked a few blocks down Missouri before realizing I had gone the wrong way — this was my first time at the coffee shop, as I was looking for a change of scenery; strike two — and I headed back toward Campesino. I thought to myself, “What a beautiful day to be lost on a walk,” and it was just then that a red Jeep drove past me.

I saw it stop and park alongside the street just ahead of me, thinking nothing of it except wondering how much it cost — I had been car shopping lately. As I passed the Jeep, I heard a door open. And before I could even finish the thought “how strange,” a man — a boy, rather — grabbed me from behind and put his hand over my mouth.

I tried to scream and it came out muffled. I looked up, and a baby-faced guy was pointing a gun at my face, its barrel staring me in the eye. He said, “Give us your purse,” and I let it go. He saw I had a phone, and the man-boy holding me from behind pried it out of my hand.

They took off and hopped in the car, speeding away. I picked up the bottle of Topo Chico I had dropped and fought an urge to throw it at the car and yell expletives at them, quickly deciding that getting shot over a bottle of mineral water would be more suitable for the slapstick stuff of the show 1000 Ways to Die. So instead I shattered it on the ground. When that didn’t satisfy me, I took off my sunglasses and smashed those on the ground too, apparently not caring about ruining more personal property after losing almost everything of value that I owned in a matter of seconds.

But this story isn’t just about what I lost. Because, you see, in a matter of minutes, the Houston police arrested the man-boys who attacked me — all three of them. And with that, I thought the story was over.

*****

I had always thought I would be a fighter, that, if not by overpowering an attacker with strength, I would with smarts: strategically elbowing him in the gut, strategically kicking him in the nuts.

But in that situation, I had submissively, grudgingly come to terms with my powerlessness — a truly defeating feeling, one so contrary to the way innocent bystanders fight off bad guys in the movies that makes you believe you could do it too, and one that I never wanted to feel again.

Not that I was entirely frozen. In less than 60 seconds from the moment that Jeep sped off, I sprinted back to the coffeehouse, where I used a befuddled stranger’s cellphone to call 911. I gave the 911 dispatcher my exact location and the direction the car was headed. When she asked me the color of their shirts, I started to cry. I couldn’t remember. She told me that was okay and not to worry. When she asked me the license plate number, I yelled goddammit, realizing I hadn’t thought to check the plate as they sped off, too busy throwing things. She told me that was okay too.

After I hung up, I sat on the curb outside Campesino, assuming the little twerps had gotten away with it, along with the $1,400 laptop I had just finished paying off and all the words I’d just written on it . A couple of things crossed my mind as I moped: One being, this is the ultimate told-you-so moment for my protective mother, who’s always warned me to watch my back for attackers at all times — even in our cute little northwest suburb of Chicago, surrounded by cornfields. Two: how wrong I had been about how it would play out.

A Houston cop arrived roughly ten to 15 minutes after I hung up with the 911 operator. And as soon as he did, my anger about the situation was pretty much immediately replaced with relief and trust. Suddenly it was as if I’d been dropped into an episode of Cops, one where everything goes as planned and the whole chain of events is fit for prime time television.

The cop ran up to me and asked, abruptly, without even saying hello, “HOW MANY GUNS DID THEY HAVE?” Then he sprinted back to his patrol car. Little did I know, as soon as I called 911 and described the vehicle and location, two off-duty HPD officers working neighborhood security in a Montrose Patrol cruiser coincidentally pulled up behind that red Jeep several blocks away from me. I would later learn that they had heard the dispatch over the radio, realized that my description matched that of the Jeep and its occupants driving right in front of them, and alerted nearby on-duty HPD officers of its exact location.

For once: a lottery-worthy stroke of luck.