Pike Place shop owner recounts how he stopped robber from taking thousands

A man recently attempted to rob a safe of several thousands dollars at Sosio’s Fruit and Produce at Pike Place, and was stopped by the 61 year-old owner. Owner Mike Osborne joined the Dori Monson Show to recount the experience.

“I opened the stand at 4 a.m. and I’m by myself. The first thing I usually do is open the safe to check yesterday’s totals and fill the safe, fill the money with twenties and fives and stuff like that, all the change that we need. So this is something I’ve done, and I just usually leave the safe open and for the rest of day — I don’t anymore, by the way. So I had to bring something down to the truck,” he said.

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“When I came back into my shop, there was a guy over my safe and had all my money in his hands, meaning he had my fives, my tens, my cash bag, my three days of receipts. And he was a big guy. It’s probably about $7-8,000.”

Osborne’s fruit stand at Pike Place had been robbed before, so he felt compelled to act.

“What I said is, ‘I am not going to be robbed again.’ I might have added a couple of adjectives too because I had been robbed a couple years ago. … So I just went over and grabbed the guy — he was a big guy — he turned on me, and I cold-cocked him once. And so he dropped a couple of bags and then he took a swing at me and didn’t really hit me, but kind of shoved me out the way,” he said.

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“And so there were a couple of other punches thrown mainly by me. Then he got by me and ran out of the stand and ran into the main arcade.”

Osborne decided to chase the man as he left and was able to subdue him.

“Once again, I was not going to get robbed at that point in time. My adrenaline was through the roof, so I just chased him down, grabbed him by the collar of his coat with both ends and jerked him down. And just he just went flat out on the tile. And that was the end of that,” he said. “Security was down there within 30 seconds.”

Dori was impressed with the feat considering Osborne’s age, and asked: “I’m 59 years old. What kind of quicks do you still have at age 61 that you were able to chase this guy down?”

“I got quicks. I’m old, but I’m not dead,” Osborne joked.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.