Gloria is a nice woman. She’s 79 years old and still works a 40-hour week at the vegetable market. She wears a pink ball cap as she whips together sandwiches and sells produce and cider to the nice people who come to shop.

The market itself is very nice. Apples, carrots and potatoes spill from ornate baskets. Honey, strawberry jam and syrup sit in neat jars upon the shelves. Customers smile and banter with one another. They banter and smile with Gloria as she puts together their orders.

The market is such a nice place, a neighborly place where folks look out for each other. I feel serene just thinking about it.

OK, the serenity has passed. Now I’m thinking about the unscrupulous, low-down, dirty, rotten, yellow-bellied rat who contaminated the market and swiped Gloria’s pocketbook. The vile, ruthless fiend who made off with the old woman’s purse because it was left unattended in a shopping basket.

“It had all my Christmas money in there,” Gloria said. “Six hundred dollars. That’s what I usually spend at Christmas.”

Yep, six hundred clams went right out the door because Gloria forgot about her purse while serving the needs of her customers. So much for fancy gifts for her four children, 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. So much for using that hard-earned dough to buy toys and trinkets for the younger kids, clothes and curios for the older ones.

“I’ll make do with whatever I have left,” Gloria said, preparing a ham, cheese and tomato Italian for a customer. “I’ll get them smaller things this year. They’ll understand.”

That’s crazy talk. The fact is, she should not have to cut corners this year because some greedy, sticky-fingered swine couldn’t resist an easy haul.

I’d like to think that nine out of 10 people would have spotted the pocketbook and promptly returned it. I’d like to think the remaining one would become wracked with guilt after lifting the purse and pawing around inside: an older woman’s medication; photos of beloved kids and grand-kids; Medicaid cards and other necessities that come with having lived a long and productive life.

“I had to close a bank account and I had all my identification in there,” Gloria said. “If they only realized just what they did. Every morning when I wake up, I think about it. I can’t believe all that money is gone.”

But Gloria isn’t whining about it. I had to somewhat badger her in order to hear the tale. She tells it with a shrug and quickly talks about making the best of things. I find her restraint remarkable. Most of us would be having intricate fantasies about finding the wretched thief and dragging him through the streets to be held up for public condemnation.

“When I heard about it, I got a lump in my throat,” said the woman who was waiting for Gloria to put together her ham, cheese and tomato Italian. “She’s such a nice lady.”

A nice, 79-year-old lady who still works as many hours as someone half her age. A nice lady who sometimes gets forgetful and leaves her pocketbook in a basket as she rushes around to get the store in order.

“It’s not the first time I left it there,” Gloria said. “Usually, someone sees it and tells me about it.”

Yes, nine out of 10 of us will do the right thing. We might see a purse sitting there for the taking and have a fleeting, corrupt thought: I wonder how much money is there? I wonder if there’s enough to get me through this bleak, holiday season?

But for most of us, conscience interferes. We think about the calamity the owner of that pocketbook faces. We have empathy for our fellow man. We imagine the elderly person struggling to get by. We envision a single mother living hand to mouth and trying to treat her children to something nice. We see the conundrum as a very human one and we dutifully hand over the bag.

That remaining bum is always out there, though, and so there will always be stolen pocketbooks. By law, the theft of an elderly woman’s purse is no different from the theft of a television set from a department store.

On an emotional level, the two crimes are vastly different. When people hear about the TV heist, they shake their heads and move on. When they learn about Gloria and her abbreviated shopping list, they seethe. The crook is seen as vermin of society and people want the culprit caught.

Me, I’d rather see the villain come around on his own. Think about that nice, old woman carefully squirreling away her earnings and planning big things for her family. Think about her crafting her budget each week so she’ll have enough to pay for food and medication.

Put a human face on your unscrupulous deed, throw a pink ball cap on her head, and maybe the money will start to feel hot and grimy in your hands. Give the money back and repent your sin. It would the nice thing to do.

– Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.