ANGELES CITY- From pastor to salesman to nuclear terrorist? Washington-based Philippine Consul Elmer Cato, a native of this city, expressed amusement over recent incidents that subjected him to such drastic evolution, amid recent events that included the shooting of a woman who had tried to ram through a White House’s gate last week and the killing of 12 persons by a former navy man who was also shot dead at the Navy Yard in US capital late last month.
“From pastor to a possible terror suspect in a matter of days—I wonder what I would be mistaken for next time,” Cato said in his Facebook post over the weekend.
He related that only recently, a man sidled up to him in the streets of Washington to ask whether he was a pastor. “I was not even in a barong hen I was mistaken for a pastor. I was in a business suit,” he said.
Yet in another incident at a Payless store, “a lady asked me to find a pair of shoes her size.”
But nothing could beat his experience over the weekend when a policeman actually considered him, albeit courteously, a suspect with nuclear arms. I saw the police car as soon as I took my backpack from the Venza (car).
It was lingering a bit longer than usual at the corner of Caldwell Avenue and 72nd Street. I quickly checked to make sure I was not illegally parked. I didn’t want the police to pull a fast one when am gone and issue me a ticket,” Cato said.
He said that “when I convinced myself that I was properly parked, I turned to cross the street. It was then that the police car quickly turned left towards me and stopped.”
“Excuse me, Sir. Can you please step closer,” the policeman, who remained in the driver’s seat of his patrol car, told Cato. Thinking that he had illegally parked after all, Cato went towards the cop who, he noted, was “pointing an unfamiliar device at me.” He, a teetotaler, later thought it was a device used for measuring alcohol in breath of drivers.
“You just came from somewhere, Sir?” the policeman asked him while looking at the backpack Cato held.
Cato told the cop he had just visited his cardiologist. “Several cars have now passed us by, their drivers looking at me, perhaps wondering why I was standing in front of a police car that was partially blocking the road. I could just imagine what they were thinking,” he recalled.
“Did you take something there?” the officer then asked. “Yes, I had some tests, a nuclear stress test,” Cato replied. Cato was relieved when the policeman told him: “That explains it. You’re radioactive.”
The policeman then showed him the strange device which turned out to be something that detects nuclear radiation, noting how the device acted up when pointed towards Cato. The cop said not all members of the police force had such device.
“Only few of us have this. I happened to belong to a counter-terrorist unit. I picked up the radiation signal down the road and it got stronger here,” he explained. Still, the cop examined Cato’s diplomatic ID issued by the US State Department before he drove off with an apology.
“Sorry about this Sir but I’m required to have a record of this. It’s nothing serious,” the cop then said.
