My mother the Senior Avenger..unfortunately not.

my mother the senior avenger...unfortunately not according to the Police. Their title would read, Anna's mother..violent Senior woman goes on rampage.
My mother was once mugged in broad daylight in the parking lot of a King Soopers. The guy had a knife. My mother was digging in her purse to give him her wallet but her hand locked on the mace I had given her instead. She pulled it out and maced the guy. He grabbed her purse away from her before the mace started to affect him and pulled the wallet out just as the mace blinded him. He started brandishing his knife blindly at my mother at which point my mother (ever the environmentalist) started hitting him with her canvas grocery bag filled with 30 cans of cat food. The would be mugger fell to the ground and kept wildly slashing with his knife and clutching my mothers wallet as my mother yelled for help.
It is at this point in the telling of the story that she said, "Anna no one would come help me."
I replied, "Let me see, the guy is laying on the ground in the fetal position while you are macing him with one hand and hitting him with 30 cans of cat food with the other".
"But I am an OLD WOMAN!" she replied.
"I think everyone thought you were doing okay.", I said.
She sniffed indignantly and went on to say," Well he had a K_N_I_F_E!!! AND he was STEALING MY WALLET. He never dropped the wallet. I told him if he would let go of the wallet I would stop and he wouldn't!"
Finally, a mall security officer came over in his little mall golf cart and the guy throws the wallet down and tries to stagger away. They catch him. The police are called and arrive. My mother signs all of the paperwork and relays her story to the Lakewood police department and they take him away.
Shortly after my mother arrived home that evening, she received a call from the police department telling her that she needed to come down to the station right away. When she got there it was to find out that the would be mugger was threatening to press assault charges against her and that the police officer had kindly got him to agree not to do that if my mother would drop all charges against him. The police officer told her she had got her money back so she should let it go. She told him that the only reason she had got her money back was because she had defended herself. The officer said that her defending of her self was a bit excessive, (maybe if she had hit him with only 10-15 cans she would have been okay, who knows. How many cans of cat food does it take to become excessive force anyway?), and that he really didn't want to have to arrest her for assault. My mother (who has never even got a traffic ticket) couldn't believe she was about to be finger printed, have her picture taken, and charged with assault, so she reluctantly agreed to drop the charges.
She started crying at that point in the telling of the story. I felt really bad as my mother really is one of those "do the right thing" kind of people and I knew this felt like a cop out for her but she had been afraid.
"I wish I hadn't dropped the charges, Anna. Now he will continue to do this to others." she said sadly.
I said, "Yes, you should have made him go to court so he could get on the witness stand and explain how he could no longer support his family in his chosen profession as a mugger of the elderly. How every time he walks down the pet food isle, he has flash backs. How, every time he sees a prospective elderly victim, he hesitates because he has to gage their ability to defend themselves before attempting to mug them. At the very least, the police have a record of him now and you have to admit, he will probably never live down the ridicule he received from the witnesses, police involved, and since he sounds like such a smart man, I am sure he will relay the story to others, think of the insults he will have to endure then."
It wasn't much but I think it made her feel a little better. I hope he is out there, looking over his shoulder, sure that around the next corner, or perhaps he wonders when he hears footsteps behind him, if it isn't my elderly disabled mother sneaking up on him with perhaps a 15 pound bag of cat litter this time.