Woman Records Racist, Sexist Attack At Bonney Lake Safeway

BONNEY LAKE, WA — A Tacoma nurse is coming forward with a video of a racist, sexist altercation she had with a man at the Bonney Lake Safeway last weekend. She wants to identify the man — who said he's a premed student — to prevent him from harming others.

The altercation began when Rachel (she did not want to give her last name) was walking into the Safeway on Sunday afternoon. A man in an older white car drove by and made a "really gross and disgusting" remark about the length of her shorts. He then pulled into a nearby parking space and walked into the store.

Rachel, 24, said she's been cat-called by men in cars before, but this time was different because the perpetrator was right in front of her.

"This was an opportunity for me to tell him, 'don't say that to me, don't say it to any woman in general.' That was all I wanted to say to him," she said.

The man reacted by saying she was "acting like" an N-word, she said. That's when she turned on her cell phone camera and started filming him.

In the video, Rachel accuses the man of being a racist, and he responds, "So? I'm conservative and I care about my people." He then lists incorrect statistics about black people, saying they're "12 percent of the population" and responsible for "50 percent of all crime."

The man tells Rachel to "go back" to Tacoma, and then tells her to go to college. When she tells him she's a nurse, he says he's studying to be a doctor.

"You're going to be working under me, you retard," he tells her. At that point, another woman standing nearby tells the man to stop, and Rachel walks out of the store.

It was especially scary to her that the man could become a doctor and be in charge of the health of people he's prejudiced against. Rachel works as a pediatric nurse, a profession she chose after bonding with nurses who helped her get through a childhood illness.

"I've always wanted a job where I get to help people," she said.

Rachel was in Bonney Lake on her way back from a trip to Mt. Rainier with her family. She was so shaken by the incident, she got in her car and went home, even as her family dined at a nearby restaurant. Her friend later called the Safeway store about the incident, but was told there wasn't anything the store could do. Patch has reached out to Safeway for comment, and will update this story if we hear back.

Rachel, who grew up in Pierce County near Lakewood, doesn't come to Bonney Lake very often, but she's never personally experienced such an openly racist attack. She did not contact police because she didn't think they could do anything.

She decided to post the video on Twitter on Monday — it had over 600,000 views as of Friday.

"The video and social media will do more than police or Safeway," she said.