Street roots., August 11, 2017, Page 4, Image 4

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Street Roots • August 11-17, 2017
her Lyft
driver
He came to her work and her home
He ’s been mailing her letters. B u t
Multnomah County denied her
request for a stalking order.
W IK IM E D IA C O M M O N S
B Y E M IL Y G R E E N
ST A F F W R IT E R
t was 9:47 p.m. on a Friday night, and Rachel
Montana was headed to Old Town to bartend
the closing shift at the Dixie Tavern.
She ordered a Lyft and hopped in the
nondescript sedan that showed up at her home
to deliver the ride.
As she sat in the back seat, she opened her
phone to create a promotional post on her public
Facebook page. It was May 5 and she had to let
her nearly 5,000 followers know they should
come down to Dixie for “Cinco De Drinko,”
where she’d be serving up tequila that holiday
weekend.
Montana, a petite 26-year-old with ever-
changing hair color and a spattering of tattoos,
said the Dixie requires that its bartenders
promote themselves on social media before each
of their shifts.
She goes by “Rachel Montana” on her profile
and when she’s working. It’s not her real name,
and for her safety, it’s the only name we’re using
in this story.
As she stared down at her phone, the Lyft
driver asked her, “What are you watching?”
Montana immediately felt uneasy. She takes
Lyft rides almost daily, and said she’s never had a
driver make her feel that way before.
It became clear he wanted to talk. As a
bartender, she was used to making polite
conversation, she said, so she chatted with him
until she arrived at work at 9:57 p.m.
The ride lasted 10 minutes, and she doesn’t
remember details of the conversation.
She got out, thanked him and gave him a five-
star rating and a 20 percent tip. “Like I always do
with every driver,” she said.
Three weeks later, while she was working a
busy Saturday shift, two men approached her bar
and ordered Grey Goose and orange juice around
1 a.m. She poured the drinks, ran the credit card
and set down the receipt.
“Your name’s Rachel, right? I was your Lyft
I
driver,” said one of the men.
“As soon as he said that, even though I’ve
taken so many Lyfts in the last three weeks, I
instantly recognized him as the guy who made
me feel weird,” she said.
He complimented her appearance and began
to ask her personal questions. She said being
friendly is a job requirement, so she reluctantly
obliged.
He asked if she was still taking a trip to Costa
Rica. She must have mentioned this during the
Lyft ride but was alarmed he remembered a
detail like that three weeks later when he must
have given hundreds of rides since then.
His questions continued, and in a matter of a
few minutes, he knew where she was attending
college, he confirmed that the house where he
picked her up three weeks earlier was her home,
and he knew how many roommates she had.
“I was trying to be as vague as possible,” she
said, “but he kept pushing for more details.”
He ordered another round of drinks and left
his card open.
At that point, Montana took his card out front
to show the lead security guard his name. She
pointed him out and told security that once he
left, he was never to be allowed back.
The name on the card was Michael Chi.
Chi is a 37-year-old from San Jose, Calif.,
whose address was last listed as an Extended
Stay America hotel in Beaverton. He does not
have a criminal record.
Chi approached Montana for a third round of
screwdrivers and then asked her what she was
doing after work. At this point she’d had enough.
She told him that his line of questioning was
making her uncomfortable and that she was done
serving him drinks.
He apologized and left without incident.
For the next three weeks, Montana kept to her
routine: school during the day, bartending
weekends and otherwise at home.
On Thursday, June 14, she left town to bartend
at What the Festival, a weekend music and art
festival 90 miles east of Portland.
That Saturday, Chi went to the Dixie Tavern to
ask her co-workers if they knew where she had
gone.
Montana wonders if Chi had noticed her break
routine.
On Monday, Montana returned home about 7
p.m. from the festival. She walked in the front
door of her house, unloaded her camping gear in
the kitchen and headed upstairs to tell her
roommate about her weekend.
She’d been home only about five minutes
when there was a knock on the front door. She
walked downstairs and answered it. There stood
Chi.
“R achel...” he said.
“No,” she replied.
“No?”
“No.” She closed the door and locked it.
Did he know she had just arrived home? Had
he been watching her house?
She told her roommates that the man who
gave her a Lyft ride six weeks ago had just come
to their home. Concerned, three of them ran
outside looking for him, but he was gone.
Montana got on the phone with Lyft to lodge a
complaint and was told that without a police
report, there was nothing they could do.
She hung up and immediately phoned the
Portland police non-emergency number, and then
she jumped in the shower to wash off five days of
camping and bartending before the officer
arrived to take a report.
Her roommate burst into the bathroom a few
minutes later to tell her that Chi had come back
to the house and left a note in the mailbox
attached to their front door.
When North Precinct Officer Tom SnitUv
showed up, Montana gave him the note and
explained what had happened.
Chi’s note said he wanted to open a travel
business with Montana and pay for her to travel
See STALKING, page 5