Woman Offers $10K Reward To Get Ring Back
NORTH MIAMI BEACH (CBS4) - An elderly woman is offering a $10 thousand dollar reward to anyone who can help police catch the woman who stole her diamond anniversary ring.
The robbery happened last Wednesday in the parking lot of a North Miami Beach Target store at 14074 Biscayne Boulevard. Helen Mars, 72, said while she was in the store doing some holiday shopping a woman came up to her and started talking to her like they knew each other.
"And this woman approaches, 'Hi, how are you? You look beautiful. You look wonderful. You put weight on'," Mars said in a written statement. "I thought she knew me from the hospital because two years ago I fought breast cancer, and I was on chemo, and I was a wreck."
Mars said she finished up shopping and was heading to her car when the woman came up behind her and she felt something in her back.
"She said to me 'I have a gun in your back, where's your car'," recalled Mars. "She then said 'Take your ring off your finger.' I couldn't scream, I couldn't yell, I was being robbed. I couldn't go into the store for maybe eight minutes, I couldn't function."
Mars said the ring, which was gift on her 25th anniversary, has tremendous sentimental value and was worth about $150 thousand. She said she had just had it repaired moments before going to Target.
The in-store surveillance footage shows Mars leaving with a woman with blond hair dressed in black. She is wearing sunglasses and black boots.
"I think she is cruel to do this to a person and this is how is I feel what I've been through give me back my ring," she says. "I know it's a materialist thing but it's very sentimental to me."
Anyone with information that could lead to an arrest can call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at (305) 471-TIPS or Broward County Crime Stoppers at (954) 493-TIPS.
