The Lookout: A True Story

By Mickey Sanders

This true story will keep you captivated from beginning to end. It's about my relationship with my older brother who I idolized and the influence he had on my normally gentle spirit. I will tell you stories about my unorthodox life as a kid in a small town and take you into the crazy, fascinating, world of my brother where I learned about money, expensive cars, clothes, and promiscuous women. I traveled a dangerous road by assisting my brother in his lust for easy money and excitement while developing into a young man at the hands of a group of women who loved, cared, and helped me at the top-of-the-world whorehouse. After my brother and his partner pulled off one of the most difficult and dangerous burglaries imaginable, I was left with the task of finding buried money at the Kings Ranch in the Arizona desert with the help of my lady friends. Often times frightening, this book will keep you turning the pages with a mixture of adventure, humor, and tenderness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781645848134

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The Lookout

A True Story

Mickey Sanders

Copyright © 2020 Mickey Sanders

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2020

ISBN 978-1-64584-812-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-1785-6 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-64584-813-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

The events that I narrate in this book are classified as historical nonfiction.

What you are about to read is my true story, and some names have been changed to protect the privacy of others.

Everything in this book is factual—as real today—as it lives in my memories, still fresh enough to share with you now.

In my early years, I grew up in so many different ways through the people who became my road companions and constant influence, both good and bad, that came from my brother, Robb.

If I had the chance to live it all over again, I wouldn’t change anything. I have no regrets.

—Mickey Sanders

For my brother, Robb, and my beloved son, Mickey Sanders Jr.

Chapter One

Nothing but Two Mischievous Brothers

What you are about to read is my true story from the perspective of my own experience as a child, as a young man, as a brother, and of the life that for better and worse I’ve been drawn to live with my brother, Robb.

None of those moments has ever damaged my spirit. Instead they made me stronger. I am in my eighties now and was nineteen when, in October 1955, we became the only burglars who dared to infiltrate a bank vault inside the most guarded secret military base in the United States, the Sandia Base near Albuquerque, New Mexico.

I was just a young man with enough courage to stand by my brother in a dangerous crime that changed our lives forever.

I wanted to title this book Under the Influence. However, later giving it a second thought, I decided not to use This Title because that might imply being addicted to drugs or alcohol or both when actually my brother was addicted to money. I must admit that my brother did have a strong and toxic influence on me ever since I was a little child, but I have no regrets about what we have done together. This book tells a story up until approximately the age of twenty-one when I was released from the federal penitentiary. The first part of my life was very interesting to me. Who knows what the second part has to offer. Only time will tell.

Bank Robbers Hit Atom Base

From Miami News, October 24, 1955

Friday Night, October 21, 1955

Sandia Base Albuquerque, New Mexico—site of the government’s Nuclear Weapons Center

It was cold and dark outside. I felt miserable as a cat who’d been caught out in the rain. The rusty, old car I was concealing myself in was beyond uncomfortable. My brother, Robb, had borrowed a station wagon, a piece of junk, for two purposes: room to haul all the heavy tools and equipment for the robbery and to better blend in with the surroundings. We couldn’t bring the Cadillac near the base. It would stick out like a sore thumb. Our job required the lowest profile possible and a larger than average vehicle. I was scared to death—not shitting in my pants scared but close. My entire body was shivering from panic and the damn cold weather at the Sandia Base, which has always been ten degrees colder in the winter than the neighboring city.

Rumors had always flown around as to what exactly went on at the base. We didn’t care one whit about what the government was secretly experimenting with in there. Our mission was not about stealing information as if we would have known what to do with it even if we could have gotten our hands on it. We were not spies. We were there after the payroll money, and I tagged along, as I normally did, to act as a lookout and to help in any way that I could to my brother, the professional burglar.

Robb, and his partner-in-crime, Bill, were about to spend between eight and thirteen hours, peeling the vault of the bank inside the Sandia Base, and then we would be out of there.

A few days earlier, we had arrived in the Sandia Base area to check out stores, to study the surroundings, and to calculate my timing while waiting for them to finish their job. I researched where I could park within around a twenty- to thirty-mile radius. It was important to find out where I could become invisible for the hours that my brother and his partner were inside the bank. I would have to come back and forth and spot-check to see if they were out yet.

I had to check in at different places to kill time. I got to know all the coffee shops, gas stations, and small restaurants to keep me busy, awake, and away from the scent of the military bloodhounds of that damned top-secret base. Not to draw any suspicion was my goal and my role. If I had failed, there would have been perhaps fatal consequences for all of us.

So I gathered a collection of hidden places to avoid being seen as a suspicious driver around the outskirts of Sandia Base. I wore a baseball cap pulled down low and a very heavy jacket because of the cold weather. It helped me because after the robbery, the FBI might possibly show my brother’s picture at nearby places because he was a professional safe-and-vault cracker.

Who knows they might even show my picture, and because of that circumstance, I wore a baseball cap and a heavy jacket so they wouldn’t be able to recognize me. Even if the FBI did go around and talk to anyone, they would say Yeah, there was a kid in here with his dog, and if worst comes to worst, all they could say was Yeah, there was a guy in here, couldn’t see his face though.

Even though I brought a thermos of coffee and food for my dog and me, every once in a while, I would go to a coffee place and circulate like a regular person driving along the road. My dog, Mopcie, was my best accomplice. Nothing more innocent than a kid with his dog. Who would suspect me? This was also part of our strategy. My brother and I had everything planned down to the smallest detail. We predesignated the spot where they would come out so I would know how to stretch the hours to keep me on schedule and out of sight of the guards. My wristwatch was very important for keeping me on time.

For the first six hours, I had to be far away and not be seen but come back at different times to check if the two of them were out. I couldn’t let them freeze in the snow, but if I were there all the time, we would all go down.

What I needed the most was to have ten different cars so I would be unnoticed every time I had to drive out there. But we only had one to do all we needed to do. Of course, if we had multiple cars, then there would have to have been multiple Mickeys.

Many things were running through my mind all that night. What if? What if? What if? I needed to be prepared for everything. If the highway patrol or the military came by and asked me what I was doing there, I had to have a very good reply ready for them. I couldn’t say Well, my dog and I are hanging around because we don’t have anything else to do at two o’clock in the morning in front of the Sandia Base with a freezing snow coming down. I thought about something that I could do with the car in case they asked me.

So I decided that first I would open the hood, loosening the coil wire, so the