
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 10, 1990                   TAG: 9005100495
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

SPUNK AND LUCK

MOST PEOPLE can probably admire, or at least wonder at, the spunk of Mary Campbell. The 52-year-old Roanoke housewife was walking down Rorer Avenue Monday evening - before dark - when a young man pulled a gun and ordered her to drop her purse to the sidewalk.

Most people would have been frightened, and immediately complied with the robber's request. Campbell isn't most people.

"I told him, I ain't giving you nothing," she recalls. "And then I told him that he better get out of my face - right now." That's what the would-be robber did, taking his disbelief and semiautomatic handgun with him.

The problem is, he's probably not most robbers. It's extremely inadvisable for anyone to assume someone with a gun won't use it - or to believe any amount of cash in one's purse or cash register is worth taking the chance.

So cheers for Mary Campbell, for her dignity and her wrath. She won one for most people - for the law-abiding among us, and against the arms-toting thugs who these days win too often on city streets. But she was lucky.

Most people aren't Mary Campbell for good reason. Celebrate her victory if you will, but know well what police advise: If an armed robber asks you for money, give it to him. Where a gun is involved, mere theft is a bargain.

by CNB