Adding insult to injury!
24 July 2007 by Naomi
My first choice for titling this post was, “You cannot tell me there ain’t no god!”. But then I noticed something that ticked me off. BIG TIME!!!
So screw the first title! On behalf of the victim, I protest the extra bruising she took in newspapers across this planet!
Victim and thief meet again at bookstore
PRESCOTT, Ariz. – A woman whose purse was stolen and the thief who took it inadvertently stood next to each other at a Prescott bookstore — she to complain about the unauthorized use of her credit card, he to get some cash.
The 59-year-old victim went to Hastings Books and Music on Tuesday to tell the store that someone had stolen her purse and used her credit card to buy $200 in DVDs.
Minutes later, while the woman was standing there, a man came up to the counter and tried to return eight DVDs in exchange for cash. The two didn’t recognized each other, and the woman even politely made room for the man when he walked up.When the manager came to handle both transactions, she connected the dots.
It was “as if the world had stopped,” said Susan Murphy, another customer who had been browsing through magazines.
The manager “looked at the receipt, looked at the elderly lady and then at the young man standing next to her and said, ‘This is the transaction,’” Murphy said. “It just blew us all away.”
That’s when the man rushed out of the store. Police arrived and eventually caught up with him.
The 22-year-old man admitted to police that he had stolen the purse and used the woman’s credit card at the bookstore, a grocery store and a Wal-Mart. Police said the purchases added up to $716.
The suspect’s name had not been released.
The staff and customers at Hastings must be high-schoolers, as well as the editors at the Prescott AZ The Daily Courier. However, Yahoo!News only posted about 30% of the article. Check out: Community involvement helps catch credit-card thief. It’s a much better story. That said, I’m emailing the reporter with my comments on calling the middle-aged victim “elderly”!
But, seriously, what are the odds…
24 July 2007, on 8:01 pm
Okay, I admit that I’m taking this personally. I’m not elderly and I’m older (by two years) than the victim. And that pisses me off!
24 July 2007, on 8:09 pm
They say that skin gets thinner as you age!
24 July 2007, on 8:35 pm
Gawd must have brought them together for a reason!
24 July 2007, on 8:38 pm
I wish the “elderly” woman would have slapped the thief across the face.
24 July 2007, on 10:18 pm
Miss Naomi, I guess it’s that “relativity” thing. Like many, in my younger days I was sometimes…impatient with those older than myself. Last year I had a stroke and a in August (I think! age, you know!) I was hit by a car and injured. I wasn’t even sixty, but one of the young people who helped me was very upset, and asked one of the paramedics (I actually KNEW the EMT!)if I was going to die. EMT didn’t think I would, but it was possible, fat embolus, infection, shock to the system. But, he actually knew me, and he told the boy that I’d lived a very full life. I told him I wasn’t finished with it YET, thank you very much. But then, I didn’t think I’d see twenty one. My father-in law died at ninety four, and he would never go to the Senior Citizen’s Center because he didn’t want to hang around with a bunch of old crocks. My harp teacher is eighty seven and I took over playing in the dementia ward at one of the local hospitals for her. She couldn’t stand seeing people that she taught in school gone down the tubes, people she was at least twenty years older than.
24 July 2007, on 10:51 pm
I realize that, Sarge. But it just seemed so excessive. It was one thing for a customer to say it – but did the reporter need to include it?
I do remember thinking people older than 40 were “really, really old!” when I was still in school. But in looking in family albums and school yearbooks, adults did look old back then. When I was in kindergarten 1950-51, Miss Busk (age 50) didn’t wear a bra! And probably never had! Her breasts rested on her sash…
I secretly think that it was the “BHT and BHA added for freshness” that has “preserved” us Twinkie-consumers so well… Formaldehyde for the living?
24 July 2007, on 11:38 pm
Yeah…Naomi…”AARGH”!
Actually, I was surprised that someone didn’t ACTUALLY say something Gord-related about the coincidence.
Aside from all that; what ever happened to proof reading in the media? I see so many spelling errors on the likes of CNN, etc. I’m referring, here, to the article line:
“A Prescott Police report doesn’t in-clude most of the details…”
Erm…”include” is now a hyphenated word? Has English changed THAT much since I was in college?
Yes, Naomi…how shocking for some young, ‘whippersnapper’, reporter to call 59: “Elderly”.
“WTF!…Why, we oughta!”
Of course, I’m OVER 65…one of the “OFFICIAL Elderly (erm…Senior Citizens)”?
Like…”Welcome to the Golden Years”?
I guess “The Old Git” was/is “Certifiably Ancient”…ready for mummification (I’m kidding!!!)?
[My best wishes, by the way, to The Old Git (if he's reading this)!]
Somehow that reminds me of my comment to Sean, when he turned 40…that he was really 20!
I’m DEFINITELY, now, “going” with that ‘Baby Boomer Age Theory’: “60 is the NEW 40″! So…I’m actually 47…perhaps even heading for Jack Benny’s…perpetual, frozen in time…
39?
Ok…for all you…erm…young GifSters…and, especially, those who remember the 1950s?:
A couple of YouTube classics…
Foist:
“Marilyn Monroe on Jack Benny Show” (1953)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_IzdZDyT0w
and, coitenly, also memorable:
“Jack Benny vs. Groucho” (1955)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wNK1Jt4JLg
25 July 2007, on 1:08 am
I caught that too when I first read the story. I showed it too my mom (who is the same age) but she needed to get her reading glasses before she could call the reporter a little fucking asshole.
25 July 2007, on 2:03 am
I’m 20, and I certainly would never think of anyone aged 59 as elderly.
My grandparents are both older than that, and I don’t really see them as elderly, either.
25 July 2007, on 8:31 am
I had a very skewed impression of age for the longest time. I grew up on military bases and “old” people weren’t around. I only saw them when we visited relatives or went off post. Old to me was quite a bit different than with my cousins.
My wife, however, was born (1946) to a mother who was born in 1901 and a father born in 1892. Her ideas of age were and are quite a bit different from mine, as is her life outlook.
Places I lived (Ethiopia, for one) people I met as a child probably died years ago of old age or otherwise.
Culturally, I
25 July 2007, on 8:50 am
I think “elderly” is more a description of how one acts rather than actual age.
But, Naomi, I think you’re just gonna have to roll with it. I personally don’t see “elderly” as an insult. Granted, I’m “only” 45…
25 July 2007, on 10:29 am
[...] Godisforsuckers: presents an interesting coincidence (nothing to do with religion). Bascially, a lady had her purse and credit cards stolen and went to the store to contest some fradulent charges. But the guy who stole her purse and credit cards was in line right ahead of her, attempting to exchange some of the CDs he bought with her credit card for cash! [...]
25 July 2007, on 11:30 am
Odds? Odds? We don’t need no stinkin’ odds. It was God did it.
Great story, though.
25 July 2007, on 6:00 pm
I think you qualify for elderly when you purchase a large Buick and then go and drive 45 on the freeway.
25 July 2007, on 7:04 pm
Don’t you pretty much have to be pushin’ 80 to qualify as “elderly”?
Now that I’m 36, 40-somethings don’t look nearly as old as they used to…best years of my life may yet lie ahead of me, I hope.
Glad they nailed the thief, though.
slightly off topic, is it just me, or are Nursing Homes kind of creepy? Me, I’m creeped out by most Nursing homes…the few I’ve been in are drowning in religious iconography, religious songs, religious services, etc; it must SUCK to be an atheist stuck in one of those places. I’ve hardly got a representative sample based on the few I’ve been in, but…
I’d just rather pass naturally at home, though if I get old enough I’d probably ask younger neighbors to please just check on me once a week or so to make sure I’m still kicking, and if I’m not to please notify the appropriate family members & officials. Either that or I’ll keel over at work, like one of our UNT professors did while I was working as a student assistant for the UNT Department of History.
They found him dead in his office, I think.
25 July 2007, on 10:08 pm
It’s subjective. Jeez, someone that might seem old, might seem young to another person. I do not see the big deal about it. Maybe because I am only 18?
25 July 2007, on 11:17 pm
Maybe she looked older than 59.
25 July 2007, on 11:18 pm
Oops, clicked too soon. For me though the word elderly conjures up old folks who need use walkers or have to wear Depends and they take like 20 years to cross the street.
26 July 2007, on 8:44 am
How dare anyone call wingnut actor Freddy Thompson(1942) “elderly”. This is obviously liberal propaganda to discredit one of major elder(oops) statesmen.
26 July 2007, on 1:50 pm
But. But. But…
Bernarda, I thought that “all’s fair in love, war and 21st-century politics!”
What curious specimens GOP/neocons/fundies are! They hate Hollywood. Yet they love the celebrities! I suppose there’s a stat for this statement: a high-percentage of tabloid-readers are semi-regular church-goers.
One way to chart the readership is to check out the ads; any mag that pushes “angel” and/or “patriotism” plates, figurines, and charms knows their audience well. Plus the “snake-oil diet pills” from an unregulated industry that, like religion, can say anything it dares!
Add HarleyDavidson and NASCAR to the list…
26 July 2007, on 1:58 pm
Off topic but funn(d)y (make sure you zoom in for the full nuttiness)…
26 July 2007, on 2:24 pm
Dat wuz reelz gude, Eve!
Iznt da nex paje ware yuz cum inn?
26 July 2007, on 6:27 pm
Eve
Best laugh all day!
Wisht Ah culd tarn da paje an reed mor!
26 July 2007, on 10:11 pm
I sent the email to the reporter and have received a reply:
It seems that she feels she put me in my place, and that she “created a debate”. I see her “creation” as inadvertent, as I was the one that posed the point of contention. Even before I had sent my email, I noticed this comment below the article:
I still feel Buric was careless…