Taking a Bite Out of Crime

On Friday, Oct 31, the Chinchon duo (Anna & Donna) invited my parents and us to join them for some Halloween tapas & dinner at the Galician restuarant (anyone who visits will be taken there). Going from the tapas place to the restuarant, the group of 8 somehow got spread out walking down the narrow streets south of Plaza del Sol. I stepped aside to let a woman flanked by 2 men pass me and watched (not surprisingly) as the trio approached my parents from behind in an attempt to pickpocket/purse snatch 1 or both of them. Unfortunately for them, my years of walking alone through the far more dangerous streets of St. Louis & Miami at night, not to mention 9 years teaching in ghetto high schools, suddenly turned the perpetrators into victims themselves...Was the chick ever surprised (along with my parents, Ingrid and the rest of the group) when I ran up to the woman (who had already unzipped my mother´s purse that she was holding between her and my dad), grabbed her by the arm, swung her around (total deer-n-the headlights expression) and starting screaming profanities at her in English, Spanish, & Italian (too bad she spoke a Slavic language!) and threatened to hurt her and her 2 boyfriends, one of whom started yelling "Crazy, you Crazy!" and starting running away. I said, "I´ll show you crazy when I catch you" followed by more expletives. By this point, I was running after them, also looking for a cop, and the other 7 realized that my parents had been very close to being robbed. Fortunately, the woman had only opened the purse, and nothing was missing. They trio took off down an alley, and since nothing had been taken, I quit chasing them. Lesson learned - don´t let people get too close behind you!