Coronado Facebook page

"To get something like that, it’s super insultive. You don’t see us doing that kind of stuff."

"Racism Lives Here,” said the sign someone planted in Jacob’s Coronado garden (He asks for first name only). It was likely picked out because he was flying a Trump flag, a yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” snake flag, and a Police Lives Matter banner in the front of his house in the lead-up to the election.

Jacob is 19, a newly-minted realtor, and clearly upset about the sign. “A couple of buddies got it planted [outside their places] as well. It was very, very offensive for us. We have Afro-Americans who we view literally as family, and they view us as family, and invite them over for the holidays. To get something like that, it’s super insultive. You don’t see us doing that kind of stuff. It’s very hurtful to have that assumed about us.”

And Jacob believes the liberal media does not portray the president fairly.

This is when I notice his scars.

“I was shot,” he says. Unbelievably, here, in safe and secure Coronado, he almost died, right on Orange Avenue, in front of the “Wine A Bit” wine bar, at 9:30 on the evening of last May 4th.

So what led to the shooting? “I’ve wanted to be a real estate agent since I was 14,” he says. “Now I am 19, and am one. But until I was old enough to sit real estate exams, and because I always loved being in sales, I would buy jewelry from people, pay them scrap value, which is more than a pawn shop would give you, clean it, polish it, mark it up, and sell it. I used the Offer Up platform to sell it.”

Finally, the real estate exam was coming up, so he scaled down the jewelry business. “I had one last item. It was an 18-carat gold rope chain. I advertised it on Offer Up. I get a text: ‘Hey, are you able to meet tonight. I would like to buy the chain.’ I said ‘Yeah, sure.’ So my buddy and I meet up with these guys, here in Coronado. We were supposed to meet outside Starbucks, 9:30 pm. And we say ‘Are you Such and Such’?”

Jacob's front yard

“These were two 17-year-old kids, and an 18-year-old. We handed over the chain. He said ‘Is this real 18-karat gold?’

‘I say ‘Yeah. We’re not trying to screw you guys.’ As soon as I say that, one of them pulls out a gun, waves it. I say ‘What’s up?’ And without thinking I run towards the guy who has my chain. I’m trying to get the chain back. I’m pulling, and from behind me I hear a giant boom! And I feel my insides expand and contract. I knew I was shot. So I let go of this kid. I say to my buddy, ‘Hey, they just shot me.’

“They obviously both take off. But I’d only heard the one shot. Come to find out, there were two shots. So I thought ‘Oh, they shot at me twice.’

“But that’s not what happened, apparently. After he shot me, he leans the gun into my buddy, who happens to be backing up and falls over a bike rack, and the bullet goes right over his head, and shatters the window at the Which Wich.”

"It had sheered off part of my aorta."

That fall saved his friend’s life. “I was still up walking and talking, believe it or not. I was coherent. I said ‘The best thing I can do is lie down.’ So I lay down (beside Orange Avenue), tried to get about three cars to stop. They don’t stop. I guess they think this is some stupid teenager in the street. I finally get some cars to stop. They start getting out of the car. I say ‘Hey, call the police. I just got shot.’ When you’re in a situation like that, everything’s going really quickly, and I’ve never really been somebody to rely on other people, so I just get up, walk over ten or fifteen yards and grab my phone, and call the police myself. I tell them my parents’ info, my info, where I live, what happened, where I’m at. [Then I] just throw the phone back on the ground and lay down and wait for the police. I figured the best thing I could do was not move the injury around.”

“And the scars?” I ask.

He shows me the two. “The first is the exploratory surgery to see if there was any other damage.”

He points to the angular scar on his left side. “This was to patch an aneurism on my aorta, from the bullet. Because it had sheered off part of my aorta. It also broke two ribs, fractured my spine, took out a baseball-size chunk of the liver, punctured my diaphragm. It was a hollow-point bullet. Expanded inside.”

“You are lucky to be alive,” I say.

“Oh yeah. Very thankful. Every day, after you get shot like that, and you almost die three times, it gives you a new outlook when that sun hits your face.”

So how does he feel about the people who planted the “Racism Lives here” in his garden?

He glances at the scars that saved his life. “It’s hard to get upset about a couple of little old signs,” he says.