Doug Clark: Mothers Day with a firebrand

Only one thing to do when Mother’s Day arrives and you don’t have a mom anymore.

Borrow one for the day.

Meet Virginia Stephan.

This 97-year-old character came into my radar awhile back, when Linda Stephan called to let the newspaper know about what a colorful and amazing mother-in-law she had.

As always, I remained a bit skeptical. Until, that is, I got to the part where Virginia chased “a blood-covered burglar from her Spokane home with a broomstick.”

That did it. I had to meet such a remarkable woman.

Virginia agreed, so long as our meeting took place after she got to watch her favorite TV show, “The Bold and the Beautiful.”

There’s just something addictive about the mercurial nature of soap operas, said Virginia, displaying her quick sense of humor.

“One day they’re in bed. Next day they’re getting a divorce,” she quipped. “It keeps you coming back.”

No kidding. Back in college I had a real thing for “All My Children.”

Virginia has lived in the immaculate brick rancher that she and her husband, Robert, built in 1954. Robert, a dentist, was a dental surgeon for the 384th Bomb Group during World War II, she said. He died in 1993 and Virginia has lived by herself ever since.

“I’ve been darned lucky,” she said, adding that she takes no prescription drugs, just a baby aspirin every day, and still manages her affairs with the exception of hiring someone to keep the lawn trimmed.

Virginia stays close to Linda and her one son, Robert Jr., who is also a dentist.

Linda, she added, is a go-getter who can “do the work of four or five people.”

And about that burglar and the broomstick?

“A dust mop,” she corrected.

Virginia still keeps a few copies of the newspaper account of what happened in the wee hours on a December night in 2002.

“It was cold and windy,” she said.

Mind you that Virginia was 83 years old at the time. She was in bed when she heard footsteps and noticed that lights had come on in some of the other rooms of her home.

She would later realize that she forgot to secure the rear slider when she moved some lighted Christmas reindeer from the backyard to the front yard of her home.

The intruder, she saw, was in a spare bedroom, going through drawers. Virginia quietly opened her cleaning closet. She grabbed her dust mop home-defense weapon and began to yell:

“Get outta HERE! Get outta HERE!! I’ve called the COPS!!!”

This had to be a terrifying sight. The burglar’s face and head was a gory mess, like something out of a slasher movie.

“He didn’t look good to me,” Virginia agreed. “I thought, ‘Am I next?’”

Panicking, the bloody burglar shoved Virginia. Not to be trifled with, Virginia poked him right back with her dust mop, causing the stranger to hightail it out the front door and into the cold and dark.

Virginia dialed the law.

I told her how tough I thought she was.

“Tough? You have to be tough when you have no choice,” she answered.

The cops soon found the 25-year-old man cowering in a bush about a block from Virginia’s home.

An investigation later showed that the man had gotten drunk, stole his ex-girlfriend’s car and crashed it into a parked road grader, the auto bursting into flames.

Then he climbed “up the steep hill to Northwest Boulevard and broke into the elderly woman’s house… after first trying to break into a neighbor’s house,” our news story stated.

“A horrible experience,” said Virginia, adding that, even worse, she had to go court six times before any justice arrived.

The idiot tried to claim that he had come into Virginia’s home to look for a telephone.

Virginia laughed. “Who has a telephone in their dresser drawers?”

A television news crew aired the story, which quickly spread. Virginia discovered what it’s like to be fleetingly famous.

A niece from Florida called, exclaiming: “Aunt Virginia, I just saw you on television!”

What a pistol.

Besides luck, she chalks up her long life to “growing up on a farm in Iowa,” where she ate right and lived healthy.

She earned a college business degree. She still plays bridge once a week and loves to work our newspaper crossword puzzles.

My Mom for a Day is pretty cool.

“I could use another boy,” she told me with another soft laugh.

Aw, thanks Ma.