Everyone traveled all over the world in my office. Three of my colleagues had told me of incidents they had experienced with pickpockets in Paris. I was in Paris at least once a month and I was careful, or at least I thought I was.
During this time, my wife, two of our grown children, and I flew to Paris from Houston. In those days, we had a lot of frequent flyer miles. We arrived early in the day and checked into our hotel. We immediately set out to see the sights.
We were walking in a tunnel between two train stations and going up a rather long escalator. Jet lag had set in and I am sure that we looked like easy pickings to the thieves.
In Europe, if you are not walking on the escalator, you stand on the right so that those that are walking can pass you on the left. Two men who were walking, stopped, one in front of me and one behind me. Nancy noticed two peculiar things. A man at the top of the escalator looked in our direction and blew a kiss. The man in front of Nancy and behind me carefully placed his hand directly behind my bulging coat pocket.
Nancy stepped up next to the man and started shoving him and yelling at him. He held her off with his left hand and kept the right in position. I was oblivious to what was going on, probably because of jet lag and noise.
As we neared the top of the escalator, I got lucky. I happened to be looking at the man in front of me. He took off his cap, folded it, and very carefully dropped it directly in front of him. I had seen a television show demonstrating this pick pocketing technique and immediately shoved the man as hard as I could as he bent over to get the cap. He went sprawling on the floor in front of me as we reached the top of the escalator.
The trick was that when I bumped into him, the man behind me would get into my pocket because I would not notice his well-trained hand. Then he would toss the wallet to the man who blew the kiss, who was now going down the escalator on the other side. If there was any problem at the top of the escalator, the evidence would be gone.
Now I was standing toe-to-toe with another man who was apparently part of their group. The other man was still positioned behind me. The man in front of me had a challenging look on his face. He wanted me to take a swing at him so he could hold me while the guy behind me finally got my wallet. I yelled at him in my best “don’t mess with me, boy” voice. We regrouped and started walking away from them and they lost interest in us.
By the way, I did not have my wallet with me. The bulge in my pocket was a Palm Pilot with the Paris bus and train schedule loaded in it. I would never carry a wallet in Paris. I always had one credit card and one ATM card in one pants pocket and some folding money in the other. The wallet was in the safe in my hotel room. I told you that I am careful!
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