In 1980 when Ted Kennedy was running against Jimmy Carter for the Democratic Presidential nomination I was a security officer for the San Francisco Airport Hilton. Both campaigns stayed at our hotel when in San Francisco. Being a security officer was one of those jobs taken out of necessity, I was definitely not the security guard type being a former war protesting hippie, but it turned out to be a pretty cool job as quite a few important people and celebrity types stayed there. Besides, we ate for free and I could squeeze three meals into my 8 hour shifts.

While working at the Hilton I got to shake Kennedy and Carter's hands as well as meet or at least shake hands with other celebrities. One of the more memorable was the time I had a cup of coffee with Moshe Dayan, one of the most storied figures in the history of the rebirth of Israel. He had a presence that was remarkable. I wanted to ask him so many questions but he commanded the conversation and wanted to know everything about what my life was like, so he asked the questions. Through the course of our conversation we discovered that he and I shared the same birthday, a fact which seemed to give him great joy. Each time he saw me after that he smiled from ear to ear and would take my hand in both his as we shook hands, like old friends.

Part of my duties for the Hilton was to monitor the parking in our lots. Being adjacent to the airport, as we were, people liked to try to beat the cost of parking by parking in our lots and taking our shuttle to the airport. They also liked to dump their rental cars there. The illegal parking was a huge problem as our conference and banquet rooms were always in high demand and the hotel was usually full. To combat the problem guests were issued parking passes to be displayed within their vehicle.

If we suspected that a vehicle was illegally parked we would place a warning tag on it. 24 hrs later if the car was still there, we would pop the lock with a slim-jim and look for the registration to check the name against the guests in our system. Often times the vehicle would turn out to be a rental car (these were the days before the little stickers that are used now to identify rental cars as rental cars) and we'd call the rental agency and find out who the car was registered to. If the name was not in our system as a current guest the agency would come get the car. We needed to be careful as few inconveniences pissed the guests off like having their cars towed.

Teddy Kennedy had arrived the evening before, and of course with either of the candidates in town, the Secret Service was with them. I was doing my lot patrol, and a car that we had tagged the day before was still in its slot, unmoved. It was parked out front, near the hotel entrance. I pulled my little security cart in behind it and looked around, looking in all the windows. Using the slim-jim, I popped the passenger door and opened the glove compartment looking for the registration and there was a gun. Now, I'm not a gun guy, don't know anything about them so all I can tell you is it was a big pistol made of blued steel with a dark wood hand grip. I had literally done hundreds of these car checks and had never found a gun in a vehicle before. I picked it up and looked it over. The serial number was ground off.

We were under strict orders that when the candidates were town if we saw or encountered anything, anything at all suspicious or out of the ordinary, to immediately notify the Secret Service and management. Let the Secret Service decide if it was anything they had to be concerned with. I left my security cart where it was, blocking the vehicle in, walked over and entered the hotel through the main entrance. Two agents were at our security station near the front desk. I quietly told them what I had found and watched two guys transform from relaxed, reading newspaper guys to professionals fully in charge and springing to action.

At the car, one picked up the gun and looked it over, without a word he looked at the other guy who then reached up and took me by the shoulder and steered me back to my security cart. He thanked me and told me I might have just done the country a great service and that they would handle it from there. He gestured to the driver's seat of the security cart and it was clear I was dismissed and was to go on my way.

Later in the afternoon I was called to the hotel manager's office. He, the chief of hotel security Bob, and the agent in charge for the Secret Service were there. We were instructed by the agent not to talk about the "situation," not to enter it in our daily log and to ignore the car, "don't even look at it as you pass it in the course of your duties." He thanked us and that was that. After we left the office Bob and I talked a little. He reasoned the agent didn't want us to even look at the car in case something actually was up and whoever was supposed to retrieve the gun was observing the car before they approached it. Made sense.

The next day Bob and I were out front smoking cigarettes. The shuttle bus pulled in with its load of passengers from the airport. A guy got off the bus, wandered around the front area a little and then walked kinda meanderingly into the front parking lot. He was looking around nervously, but hell we'd seen lot's of illegal parkers do the same before they jumped in their cars and drove off as quick as they could, afraid they would be busted.

We watched as this guy walked up to the car that had the gun in it. No sooner did his key hit the lock when a black van pulled behind the car. Two agents opened the side door, got out, grabbed the guy. The next second, they were all in the van and it was pulling away as the side door closed. Bob and I looked at each other stunned. As we looked back toward the car, a flat bed tow truck pulled up behind it. Two guys got out, hooked the car up, pulled it onto the flat bed, secured it and drove off. All of this took place in about three minutes. Bob and I looked at each other again, more stunned. Bob was ex-military police, had been all over the world in his military carrier and always said he'd seen so much in his life it would be hard to get anything by him or surprise him.  Through his stunned expression he whispered almost reverently "Fuck, it was just like in the movies. Fuck."

A few weeks later, the hotel manager got a letter in the mail from the head of the Secret Service thanking us. We never learned the outcome. Was the guy a bad guy? Was he part of a plot?  Was he there to pick up the car and the gun to shoot Teddy? To whack somebody else? Was it a drug hit? Or was he just one of the unluckiest bastards you've ever heard of who parked his car in the wrong place at the wrong time? We will never know. But for me I like to think I might have saved Teddy Kennedy's life. It has a good ring to it.