When she was 19, Sasha Alexander had two frightening crime experiences

Sasha Alexander played a character who knew all about crime on Rizzoli & Isles. Dr. Maura Isles was the Chief Medical Examiner and Jane Rizzoli's best friend. Before she stepped into the role, Alexander had two frightening real-life encounters with crime.

"When I was 19 years old, I ended up in two very dangerous situations in a month. I was in a bank robbery, and I was held at gunpoint by some young gangsters," she told the McClatchy-Tribune News Service in 2012. "When this happened to me, I was incredibly strong and clear. I was almost defiant in the way that dealt with the situation..."

One dangerous situation can alter anyone's mindset, but two can change someone forever.

"In the bank robbery, there was a woman in front of me as the men came in, who was an elderly woman, and I got so scared because he had a gun trained on her. So I stepped right in front of her, not even thinking. Even my move could've made him do something. I didn't think about it. So after the fact, I went into a paralyzed state of shock."

She continued, "A month later I was coming out of a restaurant, and I had one of those pull-out radios because I had a Jeep, and some gang bangers in a car pulled up and trained three guns on my stomach and said, 'Give me your radio.'"

Alexander said she stared at their guns for a moment, trying to figure out if they were real because of some orange tape around them. She held onto her radio, and the robbers got nervous when two bigger guys were about to walk by. They tried one last time to steal the radio, but Sasha held on. They eventually got into their cars and drove away. A few days later, she saw in the newspaper that those same guys (she remembered their license plate) killed someone at an ATM.