‘Aunt Bee' attacks invalid's assailant

January 3, 2006

MARY AMES\Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU - Wasilla police are calling Friday night's hero &#8220Aunt Bee,” after the kindly woman from Mayberry.

But Nancy Chopp, 56, might not have seemed such a kind and gentle woman to a knife-wielding robber at an apartment on Wasilla-Fishhook Road.

When a woman knocked on the door of James T. Decker's apartment, he thought she looked as if she was on the up and up, Decker said. &#8220I thought she might be responding to the ad I'd placed for a caretaker,” he said.

Decker, 62, opened the door a crack, he said, and a woman slammed it all the way open.

&#8220She had a knife in her hand,” Decker said. &#8220She said she wanted my pills. She said, ‘I'll slit your throat.'”

Decker denied having any pills, and asked the woman why she thought he did, he said.

The woman told Decker she was at Wal-Mart when he filled his prescription, and followed him home. She then knocked him to the floor and held the knife to his throat, he said.

&#8220I lay on the ground with the knife close to my throat, thinking, ‘What am I going to do now?'” Decker said. &#8220I've been robbed about six times. Without medications, I would die slowly, and I figured I might as well die now.”

Decker grabbed the attacker's knife, cutting his hand, he said, but he held on.

&#8220She was a strong bugger,” he said.

Fortunately for Decker, his neighbors, including Chopp, heard the thump when he hit the floor and went to his apartment to see if he needed help.

Chopp said she first heard her dog barking, looked out to see a car driving away and then heard &#8220a real loud thump.” Chopp went to Decker's apartment and looked in the windows but couldn't see anything, so she opened the door.

The assailant, wearing a black or blue ski mask, came toward Chopp, brandishing the knife.

Chopp slammed the door on the attacker's extended arm, forcing her to drop the knife.

Two other neighbors, both men, came in then, Chopp said. One of them hit the assailant on the chest, knocking her to the ground.

&#8220They put her on her stomach and I sat on her until the police got there,” Chopp said. &#8220It was nothing I'd ever done before. I wasn't afraid, I just acted on instinct.”

&#8220The neighbors came and tackled her,” Decker said. &#8220And she was saying, ‘You're hurting me. I'm a woman,' and they were wrestling with her on the front steps of my door.”

Wasilla police later arrested Mandy C. Stevens, 29, of Wasilla, and took her to Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility. She was arraigned Saturday on two counts of first-degree assault, first-degree robbery and first-degree burglary. According to a police report, Stevens' bail was set at $30,000.

Decker suffers from post-polio syndrome, has a bad heart and a broken back from a previous injury. Multiple robbers have targeted him, he said, and he believes the caregivers he has employed in the past are somehow involved in the repeated robberies that have plagued him, leaving him nearly destitute and in great pain.

The most recent of those robberies, before Friday's incident, occurred on the night of Dec. 14, when a white man in his early 20s used a ruse to get in the apartment and, at knifepoint, robbed Decker of prescription drugs after demanding all of Decker's medicine. Decker wasn't injured in that robbery. The man fled on foot.

Early Saturday morning, Decker had to take a cab home from the hospital, taking some of his rent money to pay for the taxi, he said.

When he got home, it was after 4 a.m. and he was afraid he would trip on things that had been thrown about. Chopp came to the rescue again, in a way that would make Aunt Bee proud.

&#8220He woke me out of a dead sleep and I went over and helped him put things away,” Chopp said. &#8220They just rip him off, somebody has targeted him. He can't fight back, he's using a cane and all bent over.”

Wasilla police are continuing to investigate and are looking for two men believed to be in the car Chopp saw driving away, the report said.

Contact Mary Ames at

352-2284 or mary.ames@

frontiersman.com.