Foot race ends with alleged purse snatcher caught

June 17, 2005

KATE GOLDEN/Frontiersman reporter

WASILLA - Monday, police caught a man who allegedly grabbed a purse from a Carrs shopper's grocery cart and fled the store on foot - just four days after a 74-year-old woman reported that her purse was stolen from her grocery cart at Carrs.

When Jeremy Hildebrand, 22, gave himself up outside the nearby Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, police recovered a cell phone, $22 in cash and $600 in travelers' checks that belonged to 52-year-old Carrs shopper Dianne Orr.

Orr, whose tan purse disappeared from her cart when she turned to get a package of steaks, said the man was in cahoots with someone else - a woman pushing a baby stroller.

"She never touched the purse, to our knowledge, and she didn't run," said Wasilla police officer Lieutenant Greg Robinson of the as-yet-unidentified person. Robinson said it was plausible that there may have been two thieves working together, however.

But Orr said she'd been suspicious since she saw them in the milk aisle.

In a hurry that day, Orr said she hadn't strapped her purse down in the cart as usual. The tall, thin man with longish, sandy-colored hair, in a baseball cap and a black T-shirt, had come toward her from one direction just as the well-dressed woman with long, straight, frosted hair who was pushing the dark -blue stroller came from another - twice. They didn't speak. But they were making eye signals, Orr said.

"You could see that they were making contact," she said.

The second time, Orr's purse disappeared. She took off after the man through the store, yelling at him to stop and at others that he'd stolen her purse. He froze for a few seconds, then took off.

He neared the woman with the stroller at the front of the store. Orr, who was convinced the woman was supposed to shove the purse in the stroller, told her to call it off. But the woman denied that she knew the thief.

"Lady, you're the one who took your baby out on a purse-snatching spree," she said.

But instead of arguing further, Orr took a hostage - the woman's own pink purse - and hurried into the liquor store after the man. She told the clerk her purse had been stolen and gave him the pink bag.

"Hang on to this," she said.

The clerk, however, apparently thinking Orr had saved the purse from the thief, gave the purse back to its owner.

Meanwhile, Orr flagged down a car to go after the man, who had taken off. By this time, shoppers and store employees had mobilized en masse to catch him. They later helped identify him, said police Lt. Greg Robinson.

A Carrs assistant store manager had called 911 and also obtained the purse, Orr said. The Carrs manager said store policy did not allow him to speak to the media.

Hilderbrand was arrested Monday on charges of second-degree theft and taken to Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility.

Investigation continues in the case of the June 9 purse theft reported by 74-year-old Patricia Gordon of Wasilla.

"I was at the meat counter looking for meat, and when I found a small package of hamburger I turned around to put it in my cart and it (the purse) was gone," Gordon, who is legally blind, said. "I only had one picture of my grandson that was in the Marine Corps," she said, "and it was in my purse."

Contact Kate Golden at 352-2284 or kate.golden@frontiersman.com.