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She Wasn't going To Let Her Purse Go ... Without A Fight
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Morry Alter
Reporting

(CBS) NEW YORK She's 86, had five strokes, a broken hip and Wednesday, Elisabeth Rubin fought a mugger to a draw not far from Madison Square Garden.

Rubin was killing time Wednesday at midmorning waiting for the M20 to take her to doctor's appointment, so she looked at the watches in the Tourneau window at 34th and 7th Avenue.

"In the glass I saw him coming up behind me acting strange," she said.

The man was swinging what she described as a wood signpost. By her account, he hit her in the arm, then in the head as he grabbed the purse resting on her walker.

Rubin was determined to hang onto the bag. There wasn't much bread in it, only the corn bread she'd made for some friends, and a $5 bill.

"He pulled, I pulled." she said.

That's when Elisabeth, who'd been in tougher situations as a Jew eluding the Nazi's in Europe, made her move. With the purse strap tangled around her arm, she grabbed her large umbrella from the walker, snapped it open and "I beat him with it," she said with a smile.

Then, she added, "I wish I'd poked him in the eye" with the sharp end.

The mugger eventually wrested the purse from Elisabeth, looked inside, saw how much "bread" he netted, and threw it to the ground, kicking at her walker. She said the guy yelled in her face in Spanish, "you're a prostitute." To which Rubin said she replied, "you're mother's a prostitute!"

Then she said the bad guy took off running. She took off in the other direction as fast her walker would take her. On Thursday, she said, the police took her around the neighborhood to see if she could spot the squat, middle aged, mustachioed mugger.

He better hope the police catch him before she does.

"I would say to police, let me beat him up."

"You could do that? A young reporter asked.

"Oh yes."