Marilyn O’Brien was a little worried about sending her daughter, raised in Flagstaff, into the city next year for schooling.

She took to social media with the question, “Would anyone else be interested in a self defence course?”

Well, 40 ‘someone elses’ responded almost immediately, and 27 of them joined Marilyn and her daughter for an evening self defence class, sponsored by O’Brien Collision Center on Thursday, Feb. 23.

O’Brien says, “I have quite a few high school students enrolled, but have also found adult women are interested as well. It’s sort of self-serving, I guess, but because I wanted it so bad for my daughter, I decided that O’Brien Collision Center would pay for a part of the fees for each student.

“To make sure it would happen, I needed to make it a reasonable price for people.”

Last Thursday evening’s class was taught by Theresa Stanley and Carmella Zutz from Phoenix Taekwon-do.

O’Brien found Stanley through a reference from a local Taekwon-do practitioner.

Stanley has been teaching self defence for the last decade, and has been in Taekwon-do, for the past 17 years; she is a fifth-degree black belt. She told the class that self defence is one of the practical applications of Taekwon-do.

Stanley, who is a whopping five-feet, two-inches told the class, “I love teaching self defence, because I’m small. I like teaching things that are effective, and basic, and are things you can do to get out of a situation.”

She also warned participants not to take self defence tips they see on the internet at face value. “Take a lot of stuff you see on the internet with a grain of salt.”