Spencer Clark is praising her future neighbour as a hero after he chased down the thief who snatched her purse out of her car last week.
Last Wednesday, Clark had gone to her new apartment on Pitt River Road in Port Coquitlam to take measurements but the few minutes she was inside were long enough for a young man on a bike to reach into her car and grab her purse — complete with her wallet, which contained $1,000 in cash she'd saved for a trip to Europe.
Fortunately, Eddie Van Loenen and his partner, Rachel Rathjen, were walking back from the store when their gut instinct told them something was amiss. They watched the youngster, whom they estimated to be about 17 years old, zigzag around on his bike before crossing Pitt River to Clark's vehicle. After watching him take the purse, Van Loenen said he didn't even think before giving chase.
"I'm 57, I'm not the fastest guy in the world or anything, but… I said I'm not letting this go, I'm going to chase this guy ’til I can't breathe," Van Loenen told The Tri-City News. What ensued was about a 25-minute chase through PoCo until Van Loenen caught up to the thief in Elks Park and pushed the teen down.
"We tussled a bit but he wouldn't let it go, so I put him in a choke hold — there's things I've learned in my time — and he dropped it," Van Loenen said, adding he figured the kid was more afraid of getting arrested than trying to hang on to the handbag.
Meanwhile, Rathjen followed behind, picking up the items that were being tossed out of Clark's purse as the thief rummaged through it.
Clark, who hadn't realized her purse was missing until she went home, raced back to the scene and began a frantic search through garbage and recycling bins, stopping people on the street and at the nearby gas station in a desperate bid to track down her bag.
Then she got a call from Rathjen, saying she and Van Loenen had recovered her purse.
They met on the sidewalk and Clark quickly saw that everything was still there, including the large amount of cash that had been stowed in a slightly hidden pocket.
"I just fell down crying," Clark said. "I couldn't believe it, I would have had to cancel my trip… it was money I'd saved for three years."
Clark was overcome with emotion again when the three met up outside her building on Thursday afternoon, crying as she hugged her "hero."
Van Loenen said both he and Rathjen have had their wallets stolen and know the hassle of trying to replace lost identification, credit cards, medical cards and more — and he was singly focussed on not letting it happen to another person.
"I'm a person of 'do unto others as you'd like them to do unto you,'" Van Loenen said. "I just couldn't let it go."
spayne@tricitynews.com
@spayneTC
