Pick Pockets

           This morning I read a really interesting article in The Washington Post. Let me clarify that it was actually my mom who read the article, and then suggested that I do as well. This is because as much as I think reading the newspaper everyday would be really helpful to my everyday life, especially journalism class, I don't always do it.
          Anyway the article was called 'Pair of pickpockets counted on kindness of elderly shoppers' and can be found here, although under a different name.
         Basically, this article is about a pick pocketing duo who were nicknamed 'the Salt and Pepper Crew' by the police. It was one man and one woman, and they would both go into a grocery store searching for elderly shoppers who were most vulnerable and would not be aware of the situation. The woman, who would wear makeup and a wig to look like an elderly woman herself, would approach the victim and say something like: "Can you help me read this label? I left my glasses at home?" While the unsuspecting person brought the product close to their face to examine it, the male counterpart of the team would quickly swipe the  persons credit cards. The two would then go to somewhere like Target and buy thousands of dollars worth of gift cards with the stolen credit cards.
           This went on for quite some time, but the two were eventually caught just recently. Here are their pictures:

  

       For some reason I can't figure out how to put them next to each other, so the pictures are formatted like this. Oh well. Anyway back to the original point of this post.
       The reason my mom showed me this story wasn't because she just thought it would be a good read (which it was), but because she said she cannot understand how someone could possibly spend their life tricking innocent people and stealing away not only their credit cards, but their trust in strangers and trust in general life.
       What these people did was cruel. And what made it even crueler was that they didn't just do it to the first person they saw, they specifically targeted old ladies, some of the most kind and trusting type of people. One of their victims was 98 years old. 98.
                                                    I realized that pick pocketing is not an uncommon thing. I remembered the

 

story I had grown up hearing from my uncle, about when he was younger and was traveling on the subway when a blind man accidentally bumped him. In helping the man up and picking himself up, an accomplice grabbed my uncles wallet and ran off. The other man was pretending to be blind.
        My mom also told me a story of when she was in her twenties and traveling in Italy with her friend. They were resting on a small wall when a man came up to them and asked for directions, saying he was lost. While my mom's friend was trying to help him, my mom saw a hand coming up over the wall from the corner of her eye. She quickly clutched her friends purse to her chest, and the men exchanged horrified glances and sprinted off. My mom said not five minutes later she heard a woman crying "Help! Thief! He stole my purse!" from down the street.
        Even my grandpa was pick pocketed. And this was relatively recently, at the Pope's funeral. The Pope's funeral. The irony.
        So the point of this post wasn't to share pick pocketing horror stories that I've heard over the years, or even to share this article. It was so I could express my views on some people's moral character, or lack there of. I don't understand how so many people could spend their lives doing this. Because of 'Salt and Pepper,' some old women are scared to go shopping alone. In my uncles case, a man pretended he was blind, pretended he had a disability, just so he could steal the wallet. People with disabilities lives are already hard enough, without the added scrutiny of whether they are in fact disabled, or are just trying to scam people.
       In conclusion, I know that there are also incredibly nice unselfish people out there. Just last week my cousin dropped her wallet in the streets of DC. She retraced her steps but could not fin it anywhere, and gave it up as a lost cause that someone had probably taken it and her credit cards. As it turned out, when she returned home there were several messages on her work cell phone, whose number was in the wallet, detailing that a man had found and turned it into the police station  and my cousin could drive down and pick it up when she got the message.
      So yes, there are horrible, deceitful people in this world, but there are also incredibly kind ones, who just try to do their duty as citizens of the world.