I was attending a family wedding at a posh hotel in Beverly Hills.
I was sitting in the back seat of a car with my youngest daughter; the car was being driven my late cousin Jeff with my uncle Art in the passenger seat.
The gated entrance to the hotel was at the top of a fairly steep hill at the end of a private road.
Jeff stopped the car in front of the hotel and he and my uncle got out to check in to the hotel, leaving my daughter and I in the car with the motor running.
Suddenly, the car began rolling backwards and I jumped into the driver's seat and pressed the brakes as hard as I could to no avail.
My daughter reached for the parking brake and lifted it up but the car kept rolling slowly down the hill.
Realizing there was a catastrophic failure of the braking systems, I decided the only way to stop the car from picking up speed and rolling down the hill and into traffic was to veer the car slightly into the shrubs that lined the road.
I turned the steering wheel and the car came to a halt in the bushes with no damage to the vehicle.
Just then, my cousin and uncle came running out to see what happened and my uncle noticed the side view mirror had come off in the bushes.
I told my uncle that I would go the DIY center to buy the necessary tools to replace the mirror.
Later that evening, my youngest daughter and I were in Australia and though it was nighttime, I took my daughter and we walked over to the DIY center hoping it would be open at that late hour.
We arrived at the DIY center to find in closed, however the front door was open and all the lights inside were switched off.
I decided to go in to see if anyone was working there who could help me as I was in urgent need of the tools to fix the car mirror.
My plan was to take the tools I needed and leave a note and money on the counter.
Locating the tools I needed, I opened my tool box and just as I was about to place the tools inside, I noticed two cars pull up in the parking lot outside of the DIY center and three uniformed security guards got out of each vehicle.
Fearing we would get caught and blamed for trespassing and robbery, I took my daughter by the hand, grabbed my tool box and left the tools where I'd found them and quickly ran out of the store.
We doubled around the corner and hurriedly began walking as fast as we could to avoid the security guards who I feared may have been in pursuit.
We took a detour through a residential complex and I noticed the security guards were hot on our trail.
I couldn't walk any faster or run as I was wearing socks with my slippers that made walking quite difficult.
We finally arrived at an intersection and were waiting for the light to turn green when the security guards caught up to us and began interrogating us about the incident at the DIY center.
I told them the story and opened my tool box to show them I hadn't taken anything from the store, but they threatened to call the police anyway and enter charges of trespassing.
Just then, one of the female security guards picked up my daughter and said she would call the family services officer to come and take the child away as I had endangered her by taking her into the DIY store after hours.
I argued that they had no right to detain me or my daughter and I demanded they give me my daughter back, but all of the sudden, I noticed my daughter was nowhere to be found and the security guards began frantically searching the are for her.
I looked across the street and saw her hiding behind a dumpster signaling to me that she was fine and for me to come.
I berated the security guards for being irresponsible and losing my daughter, telling them that I would be calling the police and pressing child endangerment charges on them.
The spokesman for the security guards apologized and said they had obviously made a mistake and immediately scurried away from the scene.
Then I woke up.
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