A would-be burglar met his match when he tried to elude Margo Foster, a marathon runner with a black belt in karate who also knows kickboxing and kung fu, police said.
On Friday morning, the 53-year-old Lighthouse Point resident returned home from tennis practice to find an intruder rummaging through her bedroom.
Without thinking twice, she said in an interview, she bolted through the living and dining rooms and followed the startled man out to the backyard. Police said he had one of Foster's backpacks strapped on his shoulders, filled with her property. She wanted it back.
A seven-block-long chase had just begun. Lighthouse Point police corroborated Foster's version of events, and without endorsing her gutsy conduct, said she had evidently been up to the challenge.
"Luckily, it turned out OK," said police Commander Mike Oh, a spokesman for the Lighthouse Point department.
As related by Foster, the intruder began to climb the 6-foot-high wooden fence in the yard, when she "grabbed him by the neck, ripped him off the fence, threw him to the ground, and put my knee to his chest."
The two struggled for a few minutes, Foster in her white tennis skirt, before the burglar dropped the bag and started running again.
"Go ahead and run," the former yacht detailer said she yelled. "You're not going to get away from me. I've been running for 40 years."
Police said the burglar headed north on Lighthouse Drive into the city of Deerfield Beach and then turned right on Southeast 14th Street, before he got tired and started walking. Foster followed behind and flagged down a motorist, who called police.
"I outran the kid," said Foster. "He had no cardiovascular system."
Gregory St. Germain, 24, was arrested by Lighthouse Point police and charged with burglary to an occupied dwelling, battery, possession of stolen property and grand theft. Police said Foster recovered all her property, including what Foster said was a gold identification bracelet given to her as a teenager by a boyfriend as a Christmas present. "He almost got away with the most sentimental thing I've kept for years," she said.
Oh, the Lighthouse Point police spokesman, described Foster's actions as "courageous," but cautioned that burglars are often armed and dangerous. "She's had some advance training and obviously is very physically fit and confident," he said.
Foster said she'd trained for years for such a situation. "I wasn't going to sit back and let something like this happen," she said.
100 Day Marathon Plan from Marius Bakken
presents a welcome fresh training approach to marathon running that has proven to be very effective. It's the best marathon training program available today.
Marius has competed in the Olympics and has trained with world-class
athletes from Italy and Kenya. He has learnt from these runners and has made those training
methods applicable to marathon training programs for normal people like
ourselves.
This marathon plan prepares you well for a marathon by first focusing
on 5k and 10k training. Only when you are ready
Marius moves on to marathon training.
Want to get ready for a marathon within 100 days?
Then you need to give the 100 Day Marathon Plan a try.
Fat Loss 4 Idiots is based on a simple idea:
if you keep on doing what you are doing, you can not expect to be having a different outcome.
When you want to lose weight, and you find that only running is not enough, then try out Fat Loss 4 Idiots. It will provide you with a new way of thinking about food and could just be that little help you need to shed the pounds and start living the life you want.
