For years, maybe forever, we've dismissed crime in our city as, 'It's Baltimore.' Well, maybe it's not Baltimore, maybe it's us.

A Parkville resident, having returned from a two-week vacation on tiny St. Simons Island on the Georgia coast, might as well have been back home. It's a spot, the reader assures me, "to relax away from the sirens and crime of our area."

But this past Wednesday, as he and his wife headed out to dinner, "we were passed by a fire engine, medic unit, and police cars with light and sirens in use." Two days later, he discovered from other Marylanders that an elderly retiree was fatally stabbed in the rest room at a park. "We have heard that it was the first murder on St. Simons Island in about  30 years," the Parkville man e-mailed. "The residents are all up in arms about this breech of their security. (I wonder what it would take to get the people in our area to become that concerned?)"

I checked the story and found it to be true. It even made the local Fox news affiliate, complete with the requisite quote from a scared homeowner who doesn't lock his doors at night. It shows that crime can happen anywhere, but it also reminded me of covering tragedies in Israel and interviewing an Israeli tourist whose plane was attacked with a missile as it took off from a vacation resort in Africa.

"Terror chases us everywhere," the man told me at the airport.

Touche.