OCTOBER 6, 2017, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A9
HEROES,
continued from Page A1
know about him. He wears
a red spandex bodysuit with
black boots, matching gloves,
and a chest harness sporting his
custom yellow logo. A black eye
mask covers his face above the
nose. The get-up is a kit-bashed
homage, of sorts, to three of
Shield’s favorite superheroes:
Captain America, the Golden
Age Phantom, and Mr. Incred-
ible from the Pixar The Incredi-
bles movie of the last decade.
Shield smiles through his
thick beard, then asks if Adam
would like a picture. Hayes al-
ready knew Shield because of
a news article a few years back
about Shield patrolling in Bea-
verton.
“Dude, would I?” responds
Adam. “Just walking down the
street and I bump in Guardian
Shield. And who are you?”
The last part is directed to
The Night Spider, Arachnight.
It’s not hard to deduce which
comic book hero infl uenced
the man behind the full-face
mask the most. Arachnight’s
costume is a blending of two
versions of Spider-Man and
one of his most notable en-
emies, Venom.
After a brief introduction,
Adam turns his attention back
to Shield, telling him that he
was thinking hard about join-
ing the ranks of community
superheroes a few years ago.
Adam tells Shield about the
design he came up with for a
costume of his own.
“What stopped you?” Shield
asks the question twice because
he would eagerly welcome new
people to the superhero move-
ment. Strength in numbers, so
long as the players take the mis-
sion seriously.
The mission, Shield says a
few minutes later, is key.
“You gotta keep the mis-
sion small. Some community
superheroes want to bust drug
lords or fi ght ISIS. Our job is
interrupting a purse-snatching,
a person breaking into a car, or
stopping an assault,” Shield says.
“It’s about being eyes and ears
when the police can’t be there.
You can’t be a vigilante. We
work within the law.”
Hayes snaps a picture of
Shield and Arachnight and then
the group crosses River Road
together. Before putting some
distance between them, Adam
asks for one last picture, a selfi e
with the heroes.
“The most challenging
thing, when you start out, is
you have to learn to get past the
KEIZERTIMES/Eric A. Howald
Adam Hayes snaps a selfi e with Guardian Shield and
Arachnight during their patrol Saturday, Sept. 30.
name-calling and naysayers. You
will be made fun of, but you
have to recognize that there is
someone out there who will
think this is awesome,” Arach-
night says.
Fortunately, for every hater,
there are 20 Adams out there.
WATCHMEN
Their paths to becoming
community superheroes didn’t
intersect until they met online,
but Shield and Arachnight feel
they have common enemies in
apathy and indifference.
“One of my big pushes to
do this was seeing YouTube
videos of people getting beat
up while others stood there
fi lming it. That is unacceptable,”
says Shield.
Arachnight puts it more
bluntly.
“If you were getting your
teeth kicked in and looked up
to see someone fi lming so they
get likes on Facebook, how
would you feel?” he asks.
Shield has patrolled for three
years, Arachnight for two, and
neither has been involved in a
major altercation.
“We are not out here to re-
place the police. We are here to
help and assist because it’s our
community, too,” says Shield.
Most people, he added, are de-
terred by the suit alone: “I’m
already crazy enough to be out
anything, whether it’s assaulting
somebody or breaking into a
car.”
here by myself in spandex, how
crazy are you?”
Being eyes and ears in the
dark spaces can help prevent
situations from escalating or
catch them before they take a
turn for the worse, said Arach-
night.
A few weeks ago, Shield
spotted a Ringo’s patron trying
to coax a friend into the trunk
of his car for the ride home.
The man’s girlfriend was riding
shotgun in the two-seater.
“I went up to him and told
him that wasn’t going to work
and everyone ended up in the
car itself,” Shield said.
On one of his early adven-
tures, Shield walked up on a
domestic dispute and called
9-1-1, knowing the situation
was beyond his abilities to dif-
fuse.
Tonight, the patrol ends up
being essentially a long string of
good deeds: fl ickering a fl ash-
light to get a driver to turn on
his headlights, going into Shari’s
to notify a patron that they left
their headlights on, picking up
large pieces of litter and leav-
ing a pair of Gatorades next to
a sleeping homeless man.
“We want to be a deter-
rent to violent crime,” says
Arachnight.“If the bad guys
notice you are there, the major-
ity of them aren’t going to do
SECRET ORIGINS
Shield and Arachnight grew
up on a steady diet of comic
books and pop cultural rep-
resentations of the characters
found in them. Shield found
something between the panels
that felt like a higher calling.
“I’m not invulnerable or
perfect, it’s that I’m willing to
put myself between an inno-
cent person and a bully,” says
Shield.“I was on the MAX one
time and a guy was talking to
told me that he felt like he was
talking to Captain America-
-like I was on that level--that
was cool. People get excited
to see a superhero and I’d like
to think that goodness carries
over into their lives.”
For Arachnight, comic
books were an escape.
“I came out of a broken
home and, when I needed a
sense of hope, I cracked open a
comic book. My mom’s death
was the infl uence that told me
I needed to become that hero
I always wanted to be. I don’t
think her death is the reason I
do this, but I know she would
support it if she were still here,”
Arachnight said.
Please see HEROES, Page A10
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