Oftentimes when we read about incidents involving someone being harassed and/or assaulted over their MAGA hats or shirts, it’s usually because the victim is wearing one.

In one recent Arizona case, however, a young woman saw one in a man’s SUV, and decided to take action:

Police in Arizona said an 18-year-old woman admitted to slashing the tire of a random SUV because she saw one of President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” hats inside, The Arizona Republic reported Wednesday.

Phoenix Police Department spokesman Sgt. Vincent Lewis said the woman admitted to slashing the tire “because she saw a hat with a political message inside the vehicle which she disagreed with.”

And unlike most other cases of this kind you hear about, the man who owned the vehicle was able to do his own detective work and give police enough evidence to find the perpetrator:

[Nick] Dugas works as a retail security manager, so he went back into the mall to look at surveillance footage of the parking lot.

[…]

He looked closer and noticed the driver had a red beverage from Dutch Bros. Coffee in her hand.

“I just started picking the pieces apart,” he said. It’s what he does for a living.

Dugas walked across the street to the Dutch Bros. Coffee and asked about the distinctive drink. It turned out the manager knew the women; they came in often.

Dugas checked the coffee place’s page on Instagram, scrolled through the followers and recognized the women from the surveillance video.

He turned over their names and surveillance video to Phoenix police.

Nick Dugas has been in the news before, but for a much better reason. Karina Bland, who reported on the MAGA hat incident, also wrote about an adoption story from last summer involving Dugas and a young teen runaway he found hiding behind some bushes:

Dugas looked at the boy, at 14 already mostly grown, the top of his curly-haired head coming to just under Dugas’ chin.

He thought about the last two and a half years and what it had taken to get to this day in Courtroom 4 at the Maricopa County Juvenile Court in Phoenix.

Thirteen weeks of classes to get licensed as a foster parent. New DCS caseworkers every few months, 11 of them in all. Countless meetings and hearings.

It had all been worth it.

In a week, Dugas, at 30, would mark his first official Father’s Day as a real dad to a teenager, not what he had imagined before the day when he walked by a neatly trimmed shrub behind one of the stores where he works and first spotted the boy who now sat beside him in court.

Though the tire-slashing woman is scheduled to appear in court later this month on a Class 2 misdemeanor charge, Dugas wants to forgive her. He’s using the unsettling incident as a teachable moment for his now-15-year-old son:

“See that hat? It hasn’t moved [from the SUV], has it?” he asked his son. The teen shook his head.

“You don’t ever let anybody change who you are, or what you believe in,” Dugas told him. “You stand strong.”

Indeed, sir. Indeed.

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—Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter.–