Sitting down at dinner at a nice restaurant/pub in Dublin, having just ordered our food, no one suspected the events that were about to occur. I was sitting next to Sydney at the end of the table. We both felt something brush beside our feet. I looked to down to see if I had dropped something and all I heard was Sydney say, "That was my purse." I flew out that door. Sydney and I both ran as fast as we could with all the people on the street guiding us saying, "She went that way!" We chased after her turning into alley ways and narrow streets. We turned a corner and saw the bag on the ground. A lady handed it to us with an utterly confused look on her face. Sydney quickly searched the bag and noticed her wallet was missing. So we ran further up and turned onto another street. We saw the women clearly at this point. She looked clean. She was wearing nice clothes. Not someone you would expect to steal. I yelled at the woman, "Hey! That's not yours! You can't have that! Drop it!" Finally when I yelled, "I'm calling the police" did she drop the wallet. We quickly went and grabbed the wallet and I asked two men on the side of the road the number for the police. Sydney looked in her wallet and her passport was missing. So we tried to catch back up with the woman but we had lost her. A taxi driver who had seen the incident drove up next to us and told us to hop in. They took us all around the area searching for the woman we described. After fifteen minutes of searching, we had no luck. At this point the police had come to the restaurant we were at.
We were dropped off and spoke to the police officer. She asked us to take us through the route we ran. We gave her all the details we could remember. The other girls in the group heard the description of the lady we had seen and they said that same lady came back to the restaurant area and spoke to them. She was right there in front of them and they had no idea. She came back to cover her tracks and told them that she was chasing the thief when she found the purse and handed it back to Sydney (none of which was true).
After a thorough report, she got a call of an arrest nearby where we were. She left to check it out and said she would get back with us if the arrest was the same woman. We stayed at the restaurant drinking and listening to music, trying to calm our nerves for a few hours. When we didn't hear back from the officer, we decided to head back to the hostel. We stopped by the police office that night to see if a police report had been filed. The main problem was to get Sydney back to London with no passport. After researching, we found out that we could go to the National Embassy to apply for a temporary passport in the case on an emergency. When they were closed and we were told to come back Monday, we moved on to the next plan. Everyone was going to use their IDs at the airport instead of their passports and hope that works and they would let Sydney on without one. After discussing the plan and speaking with the police again, Sydney searched her purse one last time.
In a small, back pocket was her passport. A pocket she had just failed to look in. The only thing the woman had taken was a few British pounds. We must have scared her during the chase and so she dropped everything. Relief! Sydney was able to get back to London and all our fears and worried were finally put at ease. I may not be the bravest person but in the moment of the chase, I was prepared to fight. I reacted the quickest and ran out that restaurant at a speed I didn't even know I was capable of. If we hadn't stopped to pick up the purse and wallet and checked to see what was missing, we could've gotten her. But everything is fine and if nothing else I have one hell of a story to tell.
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| The police station (a.k.a Garda according to the Irish) |
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| Morgan and Sydney trying to solve the passport issue |
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