Doors here still left unlocked

By JUDD SLIVKA
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

With much of the major development happening outside the city's boundaries -- north, toward Port Angeles -- Sequim has remained a small town. It has its Costco and a McDonald's, but true to the cliche, people do leave their doors unlocked.

"Nobody locks their car doors here," says Pat McAuley, the city's tourism coordinator and owner of InsideOut Marketing. "Unless they just moved here from California."

The crime report for the city is low, although crimes of stupidity abound: Someone's wallet gets stolen after it's left on a car's dashboard; someone else leaves three chain saws in the back of their pick-up, two get stolen and are found two blocks away. The last murder in Sequim was five years ago.

The party scene is similarly low-key: December brings the area's social event of the year, the Boys and Girls Club Auction, held at the members-only Sunland Country Club but open to all.

The event is supposed to be black tie. But no one said anything about jackets. ...

"You'll have one guy in a gorgeous tuxedo that he's wanted to wear since he hasn't put it on since last year's auction and sitting next to him is someone in a shirt, with their jacket on the back of their chair and their sleeves rolled up," says Wayne Uht, who moved to the area from Issaquah in 1994.

Sequim is small-town America, heavy on retirees -- in 1990 the median age in the city was 63.8. But not all parts of small-town America are so appealing.

"When they opened the QFC and the Costco and the Safeway," McAuley says, "I thought it would be safe to go shopping without having to get all dressed up. You know, that you might not run into someone you knew.

"But I still do. All the time."