Sunday, August 31, 2008

Check this out

Monroe couple describe how they fought off armed man
By Jackson Holtz, Herald WriterMONROE -- A few hours before Donna Angevine smacked an intruder in the head more than 20 times with a baseball bat early Thursday, she was sparring with her tae kwan do instructor.He had to egg her on."Hit me," the instructor told her. Be aggressive.The self-defense and martial arts training paid off for the Monroe woman, 45, when she and her husband, Roger Angevine, woke up to find a man in their bedroom."I'm here to rob you," they remember him saying.Nearly a week later, the couple has stitches and deep purple bruises. Donna Angevine has a black eye. Her husband, 48, has a foot-long bruise on his side and a bite mark on his thigh.The carpet in their bedroom, where the attack occurred, was removed. Police said the blood from the fight rendered it a biohazard and it needed to be destroyed.The intruder is behind bars.Taking a break from mowing their lawn Tuesday, the couple -- he's a retired business owner and she's a doggie fashion designer -- recounted their ordeal.Roger Angevine said at first he thought maybe the intruder was a friend pulling a prank. He asked the man if he was serious."Does this feel serious?" the stranger said.Angevine felt the sharp slap of a baseball bat against his torso.The blow triggered a 15-­minute struggle.The man ordered the couple, who were naked and unarmed, to the ground.That's when Roger Angevine decided to fight back.He tackled the intruder, hitting him with such force that he knocked the man's head through the drywall."My goal was to grab onto his wrists and hold on," Roger Angevine said.An avid snowmobiler, Roger Angevine said he knows how to grip handlebars strong enough to save his life. Grasping the man's wrists was similar.The couple was able to take away the intruder's gun and baseball bat."Hit him! Hit him! Hit him!" Roger Angevine yelled to his wife.Again and again, Donna Angevine swung the bat at the man's head. She pleaded with him to stop fighting, but he continued."Please stop fighting," she said. "I don't want to hurt you anymore."The fight went back and forth from the bedroom into an adjoining weight room. The two men wrestled while Donna Angevine kept swinging the bat.At one point, the intruder bit Roger Angevine's thigh."That's actually what pissed me off," he said.Finally, the intruder succumbed. The couple hog-tied him with belts and Donna Angevine sat on him until Snohomish County sheriff's deputies arrived."I came to make a quick buck," the man, 24, told police, according to court papers.He said he walked from his Bothell home to the couple's residence at the end of a long private road in rural Monroe, the documents said."You have a lovely home," the man told the couple during the robbery attempt. "I thought you'd have lots of cash."The intruder was hospitalized Thursday with a head wound. On Friday, he was booked into the Snohomish County Jail for investigation of first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery, second-degree assault and possession of a stolen firearm. He was being held Tuesday on $100,000 bail.Police found in the man's backpack a knife, plastic zip ties, white nylon rope, black duct tape and a single roll of toilet paper, potentially for use in gagging his victims.Roger Angevine said he finds it hard to believe someone would randomly stumble upon the house he and his wife built eight years ago. The intruder also seemed to know the layout of the house.The man slipped in through an unlocked door, fetched a slab of bacon from the kitchen to lure the couple's three dogs away and found the bedroom amid the sprawling floor plan, Angevine said.Snohomish County detectives continue to investigate the break-in. The Angevines acted in self-defense and will not face charges, officials said.The couple said they're locking their doors and have beefed up their security plan.They hope their ordeal will provide a cautionary tale to others."You can't rely on locked doors to stop a guy with a gun, baseball bat and a mission," Roger Angevine said. "You have to be able to defend yourself."On Tuesday night, Donna Angevine said she continued her self-defense training at a session for women at Tiger Rock tae kwon do in Monroe."The guy just picked the wrong people to mess with," she said.

Mini-camp success!

The Labor Day weekend mini-camp was attended by 15 children and 20 adults from six states.
Steve White's seminar for business owners was very well received. The children's seminar was co-taught by Florida's Tim Walker and South Carolina's Bruce Meyer. Bruce remarked that one of the kids talked with him afterwards and told him the last time he had visited he was a yellow belt and now he's going for brown. All the kids had a good time and got participation certificates. Thanks to K. Zwarg's Karate and Gulf Coast Kenpo for their support. (That's Tim in the photo).
Saturday's seminar was kicked off by Mr. Meyer, who taught aspects of developing and executing self-defense demos and competition routines. The battle cry was "You gotta sell it!"
Steve White followed with a dynamic presentation of how to increase your knowledge by looking into your sequences instead of just collecting more "stuff".
A lunch break included some presentations. Jim Middlebrooks, an artist from South Carolina and black belt under Bruce Meyer, was present. Jim does portraits of fallen soldiers for the families and gave me a book of them. Two members of the Special Forces Motorcycle Club were on hand to be part of the presentation, Bo McCormick and Bill Hood, shown in the photo below. SFMC is giving Jim a certificate of appreciation for his efforts. We had all the veterans of the armed Forces present jump in the photo too, also below.


Brad Congress of Bradley's Fine Jewelry here in Ft. Myers presented Steve White with a Five Swords pendant. Steve's birthday was recent, so we had a cake for him and Brad gave him his gift.

Ed Cabrera taught a great class on infusing boxing into Kenpo, followed by my presentation on the overkill principle. The seminar was concluded with a short session in which some of us present who knew Mr. Parker told a few stories and answered questions. Ed Cabrera, Lance Soares, Tony Velada, Bruce Meyer, Dr. Francis Rene, Steve White, and myself comprised a panel, which was a lot of fun.
Many in the group joined us for dinner that evening. Sunday morning the out-of-state participants left, some of them had to change their flights home due to Hurricane Gustav.
Below is an e-mail I received after the camp.

Dear Mr. Wedlake: I just want to drop you a short note to tell you how much I enjoyed the camp.
"Drinking from a fire hydrant" is a big understatement! Each one of the segments presented by you, Mr. White, Mr. Meyer and Mr. "Eddie" Cabrera was unique and well thought of with many useful 'take away' concepts.
Just as important, it was a lot of fun to work out with buddies from all over the country and exchange ideas with them.
Finally, getting insights about Mr. Parker's life and personality from people that met him was a wonderful ending.
All in all, it was a terrific experience... Thank you for making it happen!
Cordially / Carlos
If you were there, thanks for your support. If you missed it, I hope you can make a future event.

Labor Day

Gulf Coast Kenpo in Cape Coral will be on television locally in Ft. Myers on Monday, Labor Day. They've raised money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and will do a demo at Florida Gulf Coast University in conjunction with the MDA tele-thon. Should air around noon-1pm on Monday. 239-573-0005 for info, talk to Mike or Renee.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Manchester seminars

As always, we had a great time at Steve White's Manchester Karate Studio in New Hampshire over the weekend. I was not sure I was going to get there due to Tropical Storm Fay coming through Florida when I was due to leave but Southwest Airlines got me there. (Love those guys!)
Good crowds for all three sessions, and a surprise birthday cake for Steve Friday night. Francis Rene from New Orleans was there and had gotten a handmade knife to give to Steve that evening. The knife was made by Zach Whitson and is a scaled down version of the Parker knife. Very nice.
I taught some club defenses Friday, a family class on Saturday and some related technique concepts on Saturday afternoon.
Good weather, good food, good people. Steve will be here this week to teach at our Labor Day mini-camp. Hope you can make it.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Doting a bit

My niece, Serena, has been away most of the summer going to this activity or that with the Civil Air Patrol cadet program. She attended Cadet Officer School, Honor Guard Academy, summer encampment, and a career shadowing at MacDill AFB in Tampa. At MacDill they were given the opportunity to shoot a handgun.

She described herself as being "all hard-core" when she picked it up, and aimed. See picture #2 for the aftermath.


Kids, gotta love 'em.

The doctor is in

The excerpt below was sent by Marc Rowe. I read a study not long ago in which the researchers were looking at what luck is. They concluded that luck is largely due to the subject having picked up certain subconscious cues and acted on them, stating that luck is largely based on observation. In my mind, the following article relates to that. The point here is that we have to pay attention and act on given information, consciously or subconsciously.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 6, 2008) - Most of us experience 'gut feelings' we can't explain, such as instantly loving - or hating - a new property when we're househunting or the snap judgements we make on meeting new people. Now researchers at Leeds say these feelings - or intuitions - are real and we should take our hunches seriously.According to a team led by Professor Gerard Hodgkinson of the Centre for Organisational Strategy, Learning and Change at Leeds University Business School, intuition is the result of the way our brains store, process and retrieve information on a subconscious level and so is a real psychological phenomenon which needs further study to help us harness its potential.There are many recorded incidences where intuition prevented catastrophes and cases of remarkable recoveries when doctors followed their gut feelings. Yet science has historically ridiculed the concept of intuition, putting it in the same box as parapsychology, phrenology and other 'pseudoscientific' practices.Through analysis of a wide range of research papers examining the phenomenon, the researchers conclude that intuition is the brain drawing on past experiences and external cues to make a decision - but one that happens so fast the reaction is at a non-conscious level. All we're aware of is a general feeling that something is right or wrong."People usually experience true intuition when they are under severe time pressure or in a situation of information overload or acute danger, where conscious analysis of the situation may be difficult or impossible," says Prof Hodgkinson.He cites the recorded case of a Formula One driver who braked sharply when nearing a hairpin bend without knowing why - and as a result avoided hitting a pile-up of cars on the track ahead, undoubtedly saving his life."The driver couldn't explain why he felt he should stop, but the urge was much stronger than his desire to win the race," explains Professor Hodgkinson. "The driver underwent forensic analysis by psychologists afterwards, where he was shown a video to mentally relive the event. In hindsight he realised that the crowd, which would have normally been cheering him on, wasn't looking at him coming up to the bend but was looking the other way in a static, frozen way. That was the cue. He didn't consciously process this, but he knew something was wrong and stopped in time."Prof Hodgkinson believes that all intuitive experiences are based on the instantaneous evaluation of such internal and external cues - but does not speculate on whether intuitive decisions are necessarily the right ones."Humans clearly need both conscious and non-conscious thought processes, but it's likely that neither is intrinsically 'better' than the other," he says.As a Chartered occupational psychologist, Prof Hodgkinson is particularly interested in the impact of intuition within business, where many executives and managers claim to use intuition over deliberate analysis when a swift decision is required. "We'd like to identify when business people choose to switch from one mode to the other and why - and also analyse when their decision is the correct one. By understanding this phenomenon, we could then help organisations to harness and hone intuitive skills in their executives and managers."The research is published in the current issue of the British Journal of Psychology. The article comprises a critical review of previously published theory and research within psychology and the wider behavioural sciences.Journal reference:Hodgkinson, G.P., Langan-Fox, J. and Sadler-Smith, E. (2008). Intuition: A fundamental bridging construct in the behavioural sciences. British Journal of Psychology, 99, 1-27.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Kick-a-Thon

Mike and Renee Squatrito at Gulf Coast Kenpo in Cape Coral, FL held a kick-a-thon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Saturday. The studio raised $2500 for the charity, with their student, Kimmie King, raising $443 herself. One of the prizes for the student collecting the most donations was a private lesson with me.
MDA is a charity close to my heart. One of my childhood friends, Danny, succumbed to the disease when he was 16 years old. But he didn't go easily. Muscular Dystrophy essentially deteriorates your muscles, eventually making it difficult, if not impossible for you to do such things we take for granted, such as standing up. Danny forced himself to stand up for hours on end. He had a hook-up to school since he couldn't attend but surpassed all the kids in class regardless. He was acknowledged as being a brilliant student. Who knows what he could have accomplished if he had lived.
I've supported MDA for many years, in many ways. I hope you will, too.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Shot (Strike) Placement

Tim Walker sent this in. It's about shot placement and refers to handguns but the information as to psychological "Superman Effect" is also applicable to unarmed combat. This is just a part of the article, published by Frontsite, and shooting school in Nevada. One of my friends went there recently and said it's worth going back to take again.

Pay close attention to the following facts:
1. Range was 20 feet.
2. Three officers involved.
3. One adversary, 18 years old.
4. Officers used M4s with 55 grain and 75 grain .223 ammunition and Glock 22’s with Speer 180 grain Gold Dot ammunition.
5. Adversary used .45 ACP handgun.
6. Trace amounts of marijuana in adversary’s system.
7. 107 rounds fired by two officers with 17 rounds striking adversary (16% hit ratio).
8. Of the 17 hits, 11 created exit wounds.
9. NO HEAD SHOT DELIVERED by officers at range of 20 feet from either their rifles or handguns.
10. Adversary fired 26 rounds and reloaded magazine from a box of loose ammunition.
11. Incident lasted approximately 3.5 minutes.
12. When adversary was no longer able to return fire, officers still had to “fight” to get him handcuffed.
13. Interesting tattoos on very dedicated adversary.
14. I would add under the FBI’s Lessons Learned Section that when you do not inflict immediate, incapacitating damage to your adversary, you often create a “Superman Effect” in your adversary from the normal physiologic response to significant, but non-life threatening injury.
I experienced this myself when I broke both arms in an all terrain vehicle accident 20 years ago. I distinctly remember looking at both wrists, twisted and broken, but remarkably felt NO PAIN. I was so surprised by the lack of pain that I actually shook the wrists a bit in disbelief! I then crossed my arms, holding the wrists close to my body for support, and JOGGED back toward camp for several minutes before the pain began and then quickly intensified to the point where any movement of my body was extremely painful. It is during this brief but significant period of NO PAIN that your adversary can fight you like a “Superman” even though you may be continuing to deliver hits to his body.