Happy Valentine’s Day to the Man Who Assaulted Me
A man assaulted my friend and me in broad daylight outside a San Francisco grocery store last March. It was a sunny, Spring day. He had a Bible in his hand.
A few weeks before, in that same parking lot, I was surrounded by my friends. We had giant bunches of daisies and sunflowers and hundreds of pink, heart-shaped Post-It notes in hand. It was Valentine’s Day.
I am an unmarried, thirty-three-year-old woman in San Francisco. And I love Valentine’s Day. For the past decade, I’ve called my friends, even those who dread the day, to set aside the ice cream pints and self-pity and to join a fun event we call Operation Valentine’s Day.
We write out “you are loved” on hundreds of pink, heart-shaped sticky notes. We write it down until we believe it. And then we hand them out all over the city—not random acts of kindness, but intentional acts of love.
I envision saying to the people who will read each one, I see you. You are loved. This is not the end of your story. I ask myself who will read this note, and what is their story?
But this year there are other questions on my mind too, like what if attempted love speaks louder than attempted rape? Or what if hope’s grip is stronger than the drug-induced grip of an attacker?
LOVE ALWAYS PROTECTS
Sometimes the holiest response is wanting to beat the spit out of someone. Love always protects—I got that straight out of the book the assaulter held in his left hand, while his right hand gripped me by my wrist, dangling me in the air.
It was so sudden, so unexpected. But we fought back, and we won.
Men, if you are ever a first responder to a woman's abuse or assault—no matter how seemingly small—you should know that she just learned that she does not have power over her body. But you have the power to show her that she is worth protecting.
Your words and actions in these minutes will be forever imprinted on her heart.
“You never know when you will run across someone who needs to be reminded that they are loved.”
I’d like to take a minute to thank the men who stood up for me. Thank you, Dad, Carlin, Matt, Paul, Steve, James, Briggs, Ryan, Regan, Pira. To the security guard who chased the attacker until he could run no more: Thank you for running. And thank you to the SFPD officer whose name I forget but whose face I know by heart; whose toughness melted as he wrote down details from behind glass. “My wife shops at that store. I am so, so sorry that happened to you . . .” he said. It was maybe a Post-It worth of words, but it got me all the way home that night.
It was March, but I still had pink heart-shaped Post-It notes in a Ziplock bag in my purse from Valentine’s Day. Removable notes with permanent hope. You never know when you will run across someone who needs to be reminded that they are loved.
That day it was me.
SPREADING LOVE
My friends and me handed out many other notes and flowers a few weeks before the attack. We gave flowers to a widow—her first Valentine’s flowers in years. She came back for a hug.
We gave flowers to a young woman with a single frozen dinner in her shopping cart. She was so touched that she joined us handing out flowers. She said it was the best Valentine's Day she's ever had.
There was the woman at the office supply store who scanned every packet of pink heart notes in the store and asked what I was using them for. Then it hit her: "Are you the person who puts the notes up in downtown on Valentine’s Day?" She started crying.
She told me how one bleak February fourteenth she wandered alone through depression and Fourth Street. Her dark thoughts were interrupted by a bright pink paper heart. She kept it. And she went back the next year to see if there were more. There were.
Then there’s my friend I met in the Tenderloin district in San Francisco. One August afternoon, from among her sparse belongings, she revealed a crumpled heart-shaped note from long ago with my handwriting on it. "I don’t know where I found it,” she said, “but I love it, and I kept it." We wept together in a tobacco-yellowed hallway because we both needed to read that truth and remember it.
A LOVE THAT COVERS EVIL
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had some things to say about love and darkness: “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.” I am in San Francisco because many here don’t believe they are loved. And unlovedness anywhere is a chief concern of the loved everywhere.
I believe in a love that covers a multitude of evil (1 Pet. 4:8). I believe light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t win (John 1:5)—even when we don’t see it through the San Francisco fog. The same sun rises every morning, bringing new mercies with it (Lam. 3:22–23).
“Unlovedness anywhere is a chief concern of the loved everywhere.”
My city is a city of silent screams, broken car windows, used needles, human waste on sidewalks. And humans who feel like waste, walking side by side, not saying hello. A city where women are targeted, followed, and attacked in a grocery store parking lot in the middle of the day.
There is a love that covers that kind of evil, and its name is Jesus.
There is still work to be done in this city. There are still words to write on pink sticky notes. A wise author spoke this truth recently: "The written word is still transforming lives."
As long as words can reach hearts, I will keep writing Valentine’s notes. I will keep doing so, even if it means returning to the scene of the crime, with Valentines.
TO MY ATTACKER
This Valentine’s Day, I have a message for my attacker. And a flower. (My brothers have a message for you, too. But no flowers.):
Dear attacker,
You cannot silence me. Your actions and choices do not limit mine. You do not get to hold me hostage.
You could have been there last Valentine’s Day. We could have handed you a flower. I wrote those words—“you are loved”—on hundreds of Post-Its, and I meant all of them. I still do. For you, too. I think you need to hear those words.
What you did was wrong. It is not okay—ever. There is still a warrant out for your arrest. But there is also an unwarranted pursuit of love and forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ. I will follow up on both.
You are loved. Yes, you.
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY
A terrible thing happened in the parking lot that day. To me. To my friend. Maybe terrible things have happened to you. If so, I am so, so sorry. That should never have happened.
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you.”
But you are not alone.
There is evil in the world, but take heart, Jesus has overcome the world. So beautiful things happen, too.
Let me be the first to wish you Happy Valentine’s Day. And by Happy Valentine’s Day, this is what I mean: I hope you experience a defiant, resilient, fierce love that fights to defend what is good. Not an artificial love stamped on chalky candy, but real love, the kind that lays its life down for its friends and sets people free.
You are loved. Yes, you.
Hollie Fortkamp is loved by Jesus and so are you. She loves to feed people: Truth, love and whatever she cooked today. Come to the table. She is a coordinator for Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, a culinary teacher and studies Biblical Counseling and parallel parking in San Francisco.