Confluence at 11 Division

INSTITUTION OF CONTINUING EDUCATION: 11 Division is housed in the
former Carleton Village Public School. It's still a place for learning.

With the aim of helping other people avoid heartbreak and financial loss, my wife Helena asked me to share the following story with as many people as possible. 

I’m writing this Thursday evening.

At 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, Helena was walking home from a dentist appointment on a street not far from where we live when an SUV pulled up beside her, and a woman in the rear passenger seat leaned out the window and said something like, “Hey! I have a gift for you. I just wanted to say thank you for being so nice to my grandmother.” 

Helena has helped a lot of people’s grandmothers over the years; and we know tons of folks in our neighbourhood. Helena wanted to know more so she went closer to the car. 

The woman thrust a small novel-sized package into Helena's hands at the same time as she reached up and gave Helena a big hug around the neck. 

What happened next can only be described as a stomach-turning tsunami-like invasion of Helena's privacy and personal space.

As she hugged, she wrapped what appeared to be a long gold chain around Helena’s left wrist and asked,  "Where are you from?" Helena answered, “Around here.” And the woman said, “No, I mean where do you come from?”

“Poland,” Helena answered.

“Jak sie masz?” the woman replied. That’s “how are you” in Polish. Helena went further in Polish but it became evident that the woman could neither understand nor speak the language. 

The woman unwrapped the gold chain as quickly as she had put it on.

By then a male had reached back over the seat and through the window and clasped Helena’s right wrist. As he molested the wrist with both hands, he said,  “And how is your husband? Say hello to him for me.”

This, as well as few other brief verbal exchanges, all happened — start to finish — in about 30 seconds. 

And with that, the pair drew back into their vehicle and sped off, so rapidly Helena thought they almost ran over her toes.

Seconds later, Helena realized they had relieved her of  a lot of jewelry. Three gold chains from around her neck and three gold bangles off her left wrist. 

Also, on her right palm, a bleeding cut. The man must have had a blade at the ready to help himself to whatever he could get. These people were well rehearsed and, one can only assume, very experienced.

Helena: "There's no way she got those chains over my head. They were cut. And they were solid gold. That woman had some sort of cutting device."

The thing is, a passerby couldn’t possibly have seen the chains or bracelets. Helena was wearing a jacket covering her wrists and her long blonde hair concealed any neckwear.  The thieves just took a chance that this mark would have been wearing some and they hit the jackpot.

So there she stood, curbside, robbed, and crying. And holding the tiny box that the woman had forced on her as well as the cheap piece of junk plastic gold chain that the woman had wrapped, without Helena's permission, around her wrist.

Helena walked home.

We called the police. An officer arrived, took notes and said, “We’ve had a lot of this recently. We’ll see what we can do.”

Then…nothing. There were no witnesses. The likelihood of locating security camera footage slim. 

Until this morning, when our son Michel told us that he had been scrolling Facebook and came across a post. The same sort of thing had happened to a gentleman in a neighbourhood not far from ours back in June. But in that case, somebody’s household cam had caught the event, and it was easy to see the face of the woman who pulled the heist.

I showed Helena the FB post. Her reaction at seeing the woman’s face could not have been scripted. She went ashen. It was the same person.

We decided to take it to the police station. 

At noon, Helena and I drove to 11 Division. When we got there, the attending officer who was working the front desk noted down our reason for being at the precinct and said we should take a seat and that somebody would be with us in a few minutes.

While we sat in the lobby, we watched as two women — one who looked to be in her 30s and the other who looked like she could have been the mom — entered the station and walked to the desk. It was quiet enough that we could hear when the officer took down their particulars.

They told him virtually the same tale as ours.  Except in their case, the older woman had gone to her front door to check for mail. She stepped outside and was met by a woman who asked if she’d had a parcel delivered. The woman at the police station said no, but then the assailant reached up and yanked a necklace from her victim before running off. But not before handing her a dirt-cheap "gift," a cheap plastic buck-store cosmetics product and the same kind of trashy chain that Helena ended up with.

DISTRACTION THEFT: That's how the police
describe this crime; Helena and the
other woman got handed gifts of plastic junk.

In case you missed this: Helena and I were in a mid-town police station in the largest city in Canada on a November afternoon. We wanted to discuss a personally horrific incident when, by chance, two other people arrived to report a virtually identical event. And we overheard them. The timing was cinematic. We kept looking at each other, wondering if this was really happening. 

The women stepped away from the counter. We approached them and said we couldn’t help overhearing. We offered to show them the Facebook post with the thieving woman’s photo.

They agreed. It was the same woman. No question.

We told the officer. (I should add here that his reaction to the situation was reassuring. He treated both women with the gravity and compassion deserving of any crime victim. Would that all people in positions of authority act so responsibly.)

We left for home.

Just before 4:00 I got a call from a detective with the major crimes unit, asking for more details.

The major crime unit. The police are taking this seriously. (Nice scrolling, Michel!)

What I’m happier about is nobody got seriously hurt. Physically. Helena's cut hand didn't require medical attention but this has been traumatic. Not something a person can easily "put behind" them. 

I’m gratified that we are well off enough that the jewelry loss won’t be a financial burden. 

I also liked my daughter Ria's reaction to the robbery. "Just think what kind of horrible lives those thieves must lead." She's right, of course.

But here’s the best part. This afternoon, when I told a neighbour about this series of awful events, he said something like (I wasn't taking notes):  “Those people. They are so calculating. They sense when people have, like, you know, Judeo-Christian values or whatever you call it, and they prey on that. They knew Helena would want to help, and they exploited her willingness to do good.”

I am and will always be grateful I am married to somebody who wants to help others.