FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – As purse-snatchings go, hers was an odd one. A gust from the North Atlantic ripped Arlene Sulkes-Spieler’s purse from her arm and flung it into the ocean.
As fishing hauls go, his was even odder. From 600 feet in the cold dark sea, Vincent Russo retrieved the big red bag in a net full of flopping haddock.
The Hollywood retiree was ultimately reunited with the purse’s contents – including more than $500 in cash.
The handbag’s soggy sojourn started in August, when Sulkes-Spieler was vacationing with her husband Abraham off the coast of Cape Cod on a whale-watching tour.
“I heard a whooosh, and the wind blew my bag off my arm,” Sulkes-Spieler recalled. “I looked down and there was my bag in the middle of the ocean.”
More than three months later, Russo, owner and captain of the fishing vessel Miss Trish II, was about 20 miles off the Cape, scouring the 600-foot bottom with nets, angling for flounder or haddock. A commotion erupted among his five-man crew when they emptied a net on the deck.
“In the middle of the fish there was this purse,” said Russo, 46, from his Gloucester, Mass., home.
A couple of laughing crewmen tore at the bag with gaff hooks, ripping it open.
“Cash started coming out,” Russo recalled.
At first there were jokes about each man’s cut. Then sober agreement that the bag’s contents should be returned.
It was returned, and the crew got a $200 reward. Russo and crew donated it to victims of the tsunami.
“They need it more than us,” the captain said.
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