Self-Defense Strategy Thwarts Kidnap-Attempt on Boulevard
By : Robert Souza : 5/19/09
The self-defense lessons 14- year old Devin Ervin learned in Ron Esteller’s Martial Arts classes helped him get out of a dangerous and frightening situation that unfolded on Castro Valley Boulevard last month.
At Esteller’s busy San Leandro studio, Ervin explained he was heading home from visiting a friend one night and ****zed past a homeless man near Wisteria on his skateboard when another man flagged him down with a $5 bill in his hand, asking him to take the money and hand it to the homeless person.
“I told the guy I was late and had to get home, but this guy seemed forceful and got really loud,” Ervin, a soft-spoken and polite Canyon Middle School student, explained.
Moments after taking the money to the homeless person, the other man approached Ervin in attempt to pull him in the direction of a black van that was parked in an adjacent lot.
It was at that point Ervin applied the techniques he had learned in Esteller’s martial arts classes—getting free by twisting and turning in the opposite direction of the suspect’s grip, then running at top speed across Castro Valley Boulevard.
“He was really determined to get me and really forceful,” Ervin said. While he talked, a group of youngsters practiced rigorous movements from Esteller’s anti-abduction strategies and techniques program, dubbed “Survey, Avoid, Flee, Engage” (SAFE) at the martial arts studio.
“A lot of these kids think that things like this can’t happen to them, but they do,” said Esteller, a Castro Valley resident who has practiced martial arts for the past 41 years. “It’s crazy it happened in Castro Valley.”
Esteller says he got the martial arts bug at age 13 watching TV’s “Wild Wild West” show with James West, who used the same martial art of Kajukenbo that Esteller has studied and taught for decades.
For 15 years, Esteller was a volunteer instructor at the San Leandro Boys and Girls Club on Marina Boulevard, then opened his own studio 10 years ago.
“The program I teach is to keep kids safe. If they can’t avoid—or run from—a situation, it will give them the tools to engage as a part of physical defense,” he said.
Ervin says Esteller’s martial arts classes and the SAFE program give him confidence and self assurance. “Before I had the attitude that I couldn’t be touched. It never occurred to me that this could happen. What I learned here helped me to think fast in that situation,” he said.
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