Posted by Tina
Woman gets mad, then even over theft, by Christine Clarridge – Seattle Times staff reporter
When Pauline Goldmeier pulled up to her Seward Park home last week and saw a group of teens making off with her $500 mountain bike, something snapped. ** She’d been the victim of a carjacking, a kidnapping and uncounted incidents of vandalism, but that day she’d had enough. “They had no idea whose bike they were stealing,” said the 41-year-old legal secretary and mother of two. “I’ve had a lot of things happen to me, and I’m tired of it.” ** Thirteen years ago, Goldmeier said, she was kidnapped and carjacked on Genesee Street in South Seattle as she picked up her toddler from day care. The man told her he had a gun, forced her into her car and to an ATM to withdraw cash. ** So last week, when she saw her bike being ridden away from her house, she turned her car around and took off after the teensstaying on the tail of the kid with the bike.
“He was laughing at me,” she said, “but I floored it and literally cut him off a few feet from his face. He stopped laughing then and jumped off the bike.” ** When Goldmeier and her husband returned home with her bike, they were able to show police a video surveillance tape taken by the home security cameras they installed last year after a series of car prowls that led to the arrest of three of the five suspects. ** “As soon as police showed them the video where you can see them plotting and see their faces, they started singing like canaries,” Goldmeier said. ** “We do not encourage people to chase after burglary suspects,” said Seattle police spokeswoman Renee Witt. “However, people do what they feel they have to do when they are being victimized. We can’t tell citizens not to chase after a suspect; we just ask them to be safe and use good judgment.