She felt invincible. She was with close friends and vacationing for her final spring break as an undergraduate in the same place she’d been many times before.
The nights were jovial celebrations, the days were relaxing. But on the seventh night that all changed.
MSU alumna Lucy Gradolph was leaving a club in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico — the very same one she’d frequented every night over the 2014 spring break — and having a cab hailed for her. She was alone. Her friend had left with a man, and some students she knew left without her, due to miscommunication.
The cab pulled up, as usual, and she got in. But so did the cab hailer.
“At that moment I was like, this is not right,” Gradolph said. “Something is wrong with this.”
The cab pulled away from the club. The cab hailer, now seated next to her, called her beautiful. He said she looked like Brittany Spears. Then he began groping her, sexually assaulting her.
She squirmed, she tried nudging him off — attempting any movement that would not provoke violence and yet prevent the assault.
Frustrated, the hailer and the driver began discussing in Spanish whether to kill her, she said.
They stopped the cab in a sand dune area. She collected her belongings and attempted to run. They caught her, dragged her into a nearby field and began sexually assaulting her, with one attempting sex and the other oral sex.
She writhed, kicked rocks, tried anything to not let it happen, to make it harder on them but not hurt them, so as to not escalate the situation into violence, she said.
After breaking free, they taunted her, caught her and began again.
Though it felt like a long time, she said, it only lasted five to 10 minutes before a passing car pulled up, causing her assaulters to flee.
Gradolph said she hopes sharing her story will help others going on vacation realize that there are dangers in venturing to other countries and that awareness and an adherence to the buddy system, at all times, can prevent what happened to her from happening to others.
“I’ve had other people from Big Ten schools contact me and say, ‘Wow, I showed this video to my daughter about to go on spring break, and (she) learned a lot,” Gradolph said, referencing a video interview she did with Fox 2 Detroit. “If one person can be saved and helped and educated, then it’s worth it to me.”
