Transcripts

[CHIMING] WILLIAM WILCOXEN: The church school playground is just half a block from the main intersection in St. Joseph. It's where the band played at this past August during the town's centennial celebration. Across the playground sits the parish house where father Tom Gillespie talks about how one notorious event has made this 100-year-old town so different than it was at age 99.

TOM GILLESPIE: I think that people are much more cautious about where their kids are and what they're doing. And not only are the parents, but I think the teachers and priests and ministers and so on, everybody is more conscious about strangers in town and maybe guarding the children more carefully.

BILL LAWRENCE: The--

WILLIAM WILCOXEN: Bill Lawrence is the police chief.

BILL LAWRENCE: The people are a lot more tense. We have a lot more calls on people who are concerned about a car being parked. And the person may just be a salesman doing his paperwork, or it just someone stopped just a daydream while people turn them in. They never used to do that.

WILLIAM WILCOXEN: And parents never used to ask Jerry Hayenga about things like playground supervision and even fire drill procedure. Hayenga is the principal of the town's public school Kennedy Elementary. He describes the abduction of Jacob as a kind of watershed for St. Joseph. Before it occurred, strangers were greeted with a small town hospitality that assumed positive things about visitors. In the past year, through lesson and example, adults have taught children to be apprehensive of strangers.

JERRY HAYENGA: You want to try to relax and lead a very normal, happy, carefree, trust-your-neighbor life, but yet at the same time that one event overrides all those things.

WILLIAM WILCOXEN: Ken Twit has seen the change from behind the counter at St. Joe Pharmacy.

SPEAKER: Good morning again.

KEN TWIT: People come in and they drop off prescription. They'll go back out and sit in their car with their children, whereas two or three years ago or before this incident happened, they would let their kids in the car and come in the store and wait for the prescription and then go back out. As it is now, mothers will stand at the door, stand at the window watching their car constantly.

WILLIAM WILCOXEN: But Ken Twit says the loss of innocence in Saint Joseph is really not a bad thing. It's almost as if the town had collectively decided that it really is a jungle out there and that the only way to protect themselves is by looking out for one another. So now parents go more places with their children, and kids do more things together.

KEN TWIT: Personally, I don't think it's the way it was. No, it's not the same as it was, but I think it's improved. I think it's better than it was.

Everybody is I'm watching out for John's son if he's walking on the street. If somebody comes up, there's nobody that's going to get away with doing anything. I don't think if anybody witnesses it-- the awareness is definitely there.

WILLIAM WILCOXEN: And at the police station, Bill Lawrence says he doesn't mind answering some false alarms if it will help the town recover from the greatest trauma of its 100-year history.

BILL LAWRENCE: I think it's scarred the people that they will always have that in their minds. But I also think that they're learning to cope with it, and that they will get back to, quote, "normal." They're a good healthy group of people around here. And I think they're adjusting pretty well.

WILLIAM WILCOXEN: In St. Joseph, I'm William wilcoxen.