Of all the celebrities photographed with cell phone in hand, perhaps none will be remembered as well as the cell-phone bandit. This is not the kind of testimonial wireless executives would choose to advertise the many everyday benefits of mobile phones, which have evolved into indispensable appendages of humans in this frenetic age of multi-tasking.
But 19-year-old Candice Martinez, charged with robbing four Northern Virginia banks while chatting away on a cell phone, clearly stole the show. The image seen around the world of Martinez-speaking into her cell phone while facing the teller during the unorthodox withdrawal-is already bigger than life. It will be shown over and over in coming weeks and months as the case against her proceeds.
Already Martinez appears to have become an instant icon in the bank-robbing caucus. The Richmond Times Dispatch, only a day or so after Martinez was taken into custody, reported on a man talking on a cell phone while transacting a robbery with a teller of the same bank chain some 100 miles south of the nation’s capital.
It is not just the association of cell phones with bank robberies that hurts. It’s the attitude thing, too. So there’s Martinez, cell phone cradled against her ear, sunglasses resting fashionably on her head and talking to her boyfriend in the getaway car before abruptly breaking away from the conversation to bark at a teller: “You’re taking too long.”
The sad truth is cell phones are enablers for good and bad.
Drug dealers, terrorists and bad guys of all persuasions use cell phones, the Internet and other advanced technologies in plying their trade. Is it such a surprise then that bank robbers have jumped on the bandwagon? In this case, there is no need for a law banning talking on cell phones while robbing-regardless of whether hands-free devices are used-since stealing money from a bank is, well, against the law.
This is not to make light of a very serious matter. Rather, it its to underscore that with the omnipresence of cell phones in society there are undoubtedly countless more bizarre stories of this kind to come. They will make headlines because of their offbeat nature.
Taking a back seat will more common place stories of lives being saved because of 911 calls from cell phones. The latter has become expected, the norm. It wasn’t always that way. It’s the biggest and best story of all.
