Some stories just make you want to stand up and cheer.
An 87-year-old New Yorker showed the kind of toughness this country was built on when he warded off a pair of would-be thieves in Manhattan.
WCBS reported that Lawrence Schwartz and his wife, Joanna Cuccia, were walking into a senior center off East 23rd Street last week when trouble showed up.
Cuccia told WABC that a man claiming to be from Dubai asked them for directions as part of a ruse to con her husband out of his watch.
“He said, ‘I want to go to a Walmart.’ I said, ‘There are no Walmarts in Manhattan,’” she told WCBS.
That was the setup. Moments later, the man’s wife tried to snatch Cuccia’s jewelry.
“She wouldn’t let go. She scratched me,” Cuccia said.
That’s when Schwartz stepped in.
“You have an attitude? I’ll give you an attitude,” he said, per WABC, after realizing he was dealing with con artists who were trying to swap his watch for a “knockoff.”
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After he didn’t bite, the woman turned on him and went after the Rolex on his wrist – a $48,000 piece, WCBS reported.
“It’s a Rolex President. It’s gold, and you can see it a block away,” Schwartz said. “She got her hand under here, and that’s where the clasp was.”
Countless men of any age might have folded, but Schwartz, an Air Force veteran, former boxer, and a daily weight lifter, stood his ground, WABC noted.
Decades of self-defense training came roaring back.
“I grabbed the woman’s hand and twisted her arm,” he said, WCBS reported, noting she thought he was just another “sucker” to be taken advantage of.
This wasn’t his first scrap. Not only did he walk away from the altercation with his own watch, but also with the knockoff.
When describing Schwartz, a reporter for WABC said, “Larry’s the kind of guy who eats nails for breakfast.”
“Have I had different run-ins with people, whether it be drunks or wise guys? Yeah,” Schwartz told WCBS.
But he wasn’t about to let his wife or his watch be taken without a fight.
“I mean, I’m stronger than most people,” he said.
“They never expected two gray heads like us to put up such a [fight],” Cuccia said.
Scratched and a little bruised but unbroken, the couple stood their ground against two much younger con artists.
“We look old enough to take advantage of, I guess,” Schwartz said.
But he proved them wrong.
Asked what he hoped to see happen to the would-be thieves, the feisty octogenarian said, “I would like the police to incarcerate them.”
The NYPD is trying to determine if the attempted theft was part of a larger crime network.
But the takeaway here is Schwartz’s stand wasn’t just about a watch. It was about an old school American who refused to be treated like a victim.
At 87, he was accosted and still has the grit to step up and protect his wife, his property, and his dignity.
Strength, courage, and the will to defend what’s yours are virtues that — like Rolex watches — never go out of style.
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