On Nov. 12, 1974, Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s father’s childhood friend Jack Teich was kidnapped out of his driveway in the nicest part of the nicest part of Long Island. He was arriving home from work when two men forced him into their car at gunpoint and took him to a house where they chained and interrogated him. On the second day of his kidnapping, Jack’s wife, Janet, received a call from someone demanding a ransom of $750,000, and a few days later, Janet and Jack’s brother Buddy dropped the money off at Penn Station under F.B.I. surveillance. The F.B.I. did not catch the kidnapper, but afterward, he decided to let Jack go. Jack was home safe. He had survived his kidnapping. But the actual kidnapping is not what this story is about, if you can believe it. It’s about surviving what you survived, which is also known as the rest of your life.
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My name is Taffy Brodesser Achner, and I'm a staff writer for the New York Times magazine.
I grew up in Brooklyn, but I spent the first few years of my life on Long island, where my father was raised.
My father had this childhood friend named Jack Tysch, and as adults, they actually work together at the steel fabrication company owned by Jack's family.
Growing up, I knew Jack as this regular suburban businessman, extraordinarily punctual, a consummate family man.
He and his wife were incredible art collectors.
But in 1974, the year before I was born, Jack actually made headlines as the victim of an unimaginable crime.
He was kidnapped from his driveway in the suburbs of Long island, dragged off at gunpoint, and held in a closet for days, away from his wife and his young children.
After a week in captivity, he was ransomed back to his family for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
He made it out healthy and safe, and by all outward appearances, he moved on.
I grew up very aware of Jack's story.
As a child, I would wonder what it was like to be rich enough to be kidnapped.
But as time went by and I developed empathy and compassion at all the right stages, I came to understand that someone I knew and cared about had been the victim of a completely violent crime.
And then recently, as I was working on my novel, Long Island Compromise, which just came out, a kidnapping kept finding its way into the plot.