After her duty at the dedication Sandra was relieved just before 1500 hours. She returned to the hotel, she would sleep till just before 2100 and be available to welcome the women to the suite and serve as last stand for the first four hours of the night, get an hour break and stand for the remainder of the night. She would have enough sleep to be fresh for the night ahead.

Within four hours Sandra was jarred awake by the pounding on the door of her room. It was the SIC, she was needed as soon as she could get dressed. She pulled on her clothes and reported to the command center. It was only 1820. She would not get the rest she really needed to stay awake all night. It would be another long one. She was replacing another agent on the meeting room perimeter. She would be replaced just in time to return to the hotel for the night. As she was going out the door the SIC reminded her, “Just be careful out there, the agent you are replacing is in the hospital, he stepped on something that ripped up his foot, he’ll be out of action for weeks. We have lost three agents this way today. Someone is really dropping these things.” He showed her an object.

The actual device was one that looks like a set of jacks for kids. There the similarity ends. They were made of three pieces of 1/8 inch steel rod about 6 inches long, bent at 90 degrees in the center and with sharpened ends. The three pieces were brazed together to form a structure that would fall and lay in any position, a threat to anyone who stepped on it. They were also a threat to automobile tires. These had never been seen as a threat to the president before. They were usually used on union picket lines and there was concern that the unions were having them dropped. Three of these had claimed agents as their victims in the previous week. The depletion of the secret service force was not significant yet but with each agent taken out of the line, the risks increased. People put in too many hours, they were tired, and tired people reacted slower and made mistakes. They would not think fast enough to handle new threats.

Sandra was now out on the line, watching for anything. It was dark and scary out there. Things moved; things she could not identify. She tracked each one, none became a threat. She was happy when she was called to return to the hotel.