During the noon hour on Dec. 21, a young man wearing a Santa hat rang the doorbell at the Mt. Rubidoux church, newly-relocated to Victoria Avenue in Riverside. Imelda Mitchell, church secretary, opened the locked door and listened to his sales pitch for Christmas candy and mugs. She gently rejected the offer. He pulled a gun.

“He’s got a gun!” she shouted, running to the office where her daughter, 22, and an assistant, seven months pregnant, were. Falling to her knees Mitchell began praying aloud, “Jesus, help us! Jesus, have mercy on us!”

“I was just waiting for the gunshot,” she said.

The intruder, however, walked past the office door. Mitchell’s daughter closed and locked it and all took refuge under desks. January Baker, the assistant, tripped the alarm. “The alarm system had been just installed the day before,” Mitchell explained. “And we had just received panic buttons for our key rings an hour-and-a-half earlier!”

Down the hall, the intruder pointed his gun at Bill Jenkins, a sound technician, and ordered him to the floor. He missed seeing the ministry leader, a mother with two children, working in another office. As the alarm system sounded, the gunman fled. Police responded by phone to the alarm, and a SWAT team and police helicopter arrived within minutes to search the premises. The suspect has never been found.

“We praise God that no one was hurt or injured, ” said Wesley Knight, senior pastor. Since the incident, the church has put more precautions in place. Surveillance cameras view several locked entrances, and an intercom is in place so the secretary can talk to strangers without going to the door.

“The safety and security of our employees and volunteers are extremely important to us,” said Tim Rawson, associate treasurer of the Southeastern California. “We continue to urge local churches to provide the safety equipment necessary — cameras, intercoms, panic alarms, etc. — to conduct their daily activities in a safe manner.”