Kleptomaniac

Yesterday Greg and I were on a date. I picked him up from school and we were just going to run some errands and get a few things to make pizza for dinner. While we were wandering around the mall, we decided to go into Rite Aide. Just as we walked in we both saw this woman fumbling around with some stuff and shoving it in her big baggy black bag. I pretended to be looking at some stuff nearby (but actually watched her) while Greg went and told the clerk. She saw Greg go to the clerk so she jetted. She went to the women's bathroom right outside the store, so I followed her there and pretended to blow my nose. When she saw me she quickly left the bathroom and went into a restaurant across the hall from the bathroom and Rite Aide. We tried looking for her there but she had just walked straight through the restaurant and out the other side to the street. It was kind of a disappointment since we actually saw her stealing stuff, but it was hard to say what exactly she was stealing, and the clerk couldn't just tackle her based on what we said.

So we continued our shopping at Rite Aide. When we were done there we went back into the hall of the mall and sat down at a table to talk about what we would do next. To our surprise the same woman with the big bag came walking back into the mall. I couldn't believe she would come back! So we jumped up and decided to follow her and see if we could catch her stealing again. Greg was too excited and wanted to follow her closer, but I said we should keep a distance so we could be sly about it. We were like real detectives! Hahahah!

At some point while she was walking down the long mall hall she turned her head as if looking at stuff in a store window but she looked back a little and saw us following her. So she walked all the way down to the end of the mall and then looped around and went back to the beginning of the mall. We stepped inside a store to spy, so the next time she looked back she didn't see us. She went right back into Rite Aide and went straight to the back of the store. We followed her in, and I told the clerk she was back while Greg followed her secretly with his camera phone ready. He knew she was towards the end of one aisle, so he came around from the side and got this picture of her while she was in the act of stealing.



Notice how her one hand is reaching up to something on the top shelf. That's what everybody's supposed to see. Then her other hand is reaching into the lower shelf and sliding stuff off into her big bag. She managed to slip out the front door that leads to the street before we noticed. So Greg and I (having fun being detectives) followed her all the way to Winco. We watched her get a cart and start towards the produce section, so we ran to Customer Service and told the clerk there. A couple men clerks jumped up to listen, and then made a quick signal. Their secret shopper came over and looked at her picture on the phone, then took off to find her. He looked like some random old skinny guy carrying a bag of groceries. He was good too, because we couldn't find him after that.

We did a little shopping there and decided to forget about the woman. But then when we went to the check out line, there she was! After she paid for her stuff she went to go bag her groceries (you bag your own at this store) and we noticed her tying her big black bag (which was a little fuller) closed. Then she took her stuff and sat on a bench. I went to get the car (from the complete other side of the mall) and Greg stayed to keep an eye on her. He said that an older man (probably her husband) came and got her, and then they drove away together. And that was the end of our crime detectives gig.
It made our date a little more interesting than just buying jeans and pizza stuff.