The recent events surrounding the prison guard, Vicky White, running away with a prisoner she had developed a relationship with, was both sad and bewildering. She planned their escape, but as they were being apprehended, she took her own life. She was one day away from ending an outstanding career, and poise to enjoy retirement life, and threw it all away for eleven days on the run.
Vicky’s distraught mother said, “She would come home after work, eat supper at my house, and pick up her dog. She’d walk her dog and that was her routine every day,” Chris Swecker, a former FBI assistant director, stated that this was a case of someone “looking for love in the wrong places.”
We will never know what her thoughts were as she sold her house, stashed a get-a-way vehicle, planned an escape, which she must have known would probably have a bad ending. Let this warn all of us to “be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pe. 5:9). The lonely Mrs. White must have been easy prey. Her daily association with convicts was the devil’s bait. Such a sad event. Amos’ words ring clear in our ears: “Seek good and not evil, that you may live” (4:14).
-Dennis Doughty