score: thieves, 2000000; plucky British beachgoers, 1

I cried laughing when I heard this story, so even if it loses a bit in the retelling it will hopefully still be amusing:

My friend was at Ipanema beach and had brought along a backpack with a couple of books. For the purposes of the story, I should note that she’s British but living in Rio, is about my height but skinnier, and speaks excellent Portuguese. Anyway, she had staked out a spot and was lying down in the sand with all her stuff when she was momentarily distracted by a vendor trying to sell her something — and while she was looking the other way a guy grabbed her backpack and sauntered off.

She realized it was missing as soon as she turned around, and immediately saw the guy walking away with her backpack. She was so angry she didn’t even think, she jumped to her feet and literally sprinted across the beach in her bikini to chase the guy down. She ran up behind him and punched him, grabbing at her backpack and trying to wrestle it from him. “It’s not what you think,” the guy said. This made her furious. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, IT’S NOT WHAT I THINK?!? You are bloody HOLDING my bloody BACKPACK!!” she shouted at him. At least I think that was the general gist of an impressive tirade in Portuguese and English, combined with some even more impressive smacks across the face. The guy was taken totally by surprise. My friend looked around for a police officer (“they harass me all the time when I’m doing nothing wrong, and where are they when they could actually be useful?”), but failing to find one, wrenched her backpack free of the guy’s grip, then grabbed HIS backpack and took that as well. She smacked him a few more times — his glasses had been knocked into the sand by that point — swore at him a bit more, and finally turned around and stormed away. Still furious. But carrying both backpacks.

She never got her cellphone back — it had somehow disappeared from her bag — but, as she noted reflectively, she now has a whole bunch of Brazlilian-made handicrafts as new decorations for her flat. It was an insanely stupid impulse (DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME) but the mental image of a 5′6” girl in a bikini beating up a beach thief is too good not to share. Apparently, I’m not the only one who thought so: she got an actual round of applause from the bystanders at the beach.