Elderly woman accosted by robbers in roadside attack

Wow. Preying on a frail elderly person and trying to steal an item likely far more valuable in personal than cash terms. Appalling and disgraceful. (The rest of my reactions are not printable in a family newspaper.)

I hope this woman sustains no permanent physical or emotional/mental damage from this assault.

This deserves a LOT of attention! This despicable crime is the latest in a string of criminal thuggery affecting Palo Alto, the SF Bay Area and portions of the state of California.
Contact your political representatives to state it’s time to get tough on criminals and protect the general public. We are in an era of unprecedented risk to Public Safety. Patrols, arrests, charging, active prosecution must occur.
Stop the idiotic “no bail” scheme.

Horrible!
Yes, it happens and I hope ppl notify their neighbors/twitter:

See link: San Jose/San Ramon in February:

Web Link

"This is a part of a large group, stemming from the Eastern European area. In our city, the target demographic were the elderly and it was people of South Asian descent."

Dozens of primarily Asian Americans, reached out to ABC7 News on social media, warning their loved ones had been victimized as well. Reports came in from Union City, South San Francisco, San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area.

82-year-old San Jose woman swindled of expensive necklace in her own driveway
Police say older Asians are being targeted, and that they need to be especially cautious during the time of the Lunar New Year.

2/2022:
SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- A crime ring sweeping California is targeting seniors, often Asian Americans, for thousands of dollars in jewelry. In many cases, the victims don't even realize what's happening, the crimes happen so fast.

"They'll come up to them, engage them in a convo that's very friendly and take cheap costume jewelry or a bracelet/necklace and say 'we want you to have this,'" says Capitan Denton Carlson with the San Ramon Police Department.

It's the same "slight of hand" crime targeting seniors in many parts of the Bay Area, Southern California and Sacramento area.

Video from a man named Chris Luu shows his 82-year-old mother in the front yard of her San Jose home. She's flagged over by a woman in an SUV who says some words to her, gets close and suddenly her gold chain is gone. Video shows the woman walk away, slightly confused at what just happened.
Capitan Carlson explains the crime.

"They'll slip the jewelry on the unsuspecting victim and at the same time they're engaging, they'll take it back and remove the victim's valuable jewelry."

A similar 'bait & steal' operation was reported by customers in the parking lot of the Grant Road Plaza in Mountain View awhile back.

Two white males were driving around slowly in a late model pickup truck and offering people an opportunity to buy solid 18K gold 'imported European' jewelry at 60% below ordinary retail.

When one prospective customer threatened to contact the police, they departed quickly and were never seen again in the area.

As noted in Whataboutme's San Jose/San Ramon suspect description, we later learned that there were recent reports of Romani swindlers operating in the area.