Say you’re out for Chinese food in San Francisco when a stranger walks over, grabs your cell phone and makes a run for it. What do you do?
If you’re tennis star Serena Williams, you don’t wait for the man you’re dining with to play knight in shining armor. You leap up, chase the thief through the restaurant and down the sidewalk, confront him — politely — and get your phone back.
“Omg that dude took my phone!!” Williams, 34, posted on Facebook about her Tuesday night encounter with a thief at Mission Chinese. Alongside a photo of herself dressed as Superwoman, Williams recounted the tale in prose as breakneck as a volley at Wimbledon.
“Not thinking I reacted (hence the superwoman photo) I jumped up, weaved my way in and out of the cozy restaurant (leaping over a chair or two) and chased him down. He began to run but I was too fast. (Those sprints came in handy) I was upon him in a flash!”
The restaurant’s surveillance video showed a bald man in a white shirt carrying a jacket and walking by the four-person table where Williams and a bearded companion were seated across from one another. Williams’ phone and other items were on a chair to her left. The man passed the table, turned, retraced his steps and fiddled with his jacket.
The video shows Williams looking down at the chair beside her and appearing to notice something wrong and standing up. The video cuts to the man leaving the restaurant. Williams is seen seconds behind him. Outdoor video showed her striding up the Mission Street sidewalk and approaching the man, who put on his jacket as he turned to face her.
Williams continued the narrative on Facebook:
“In the most menacing yet calm no nonsense voice I could muster I kindly asked him if he ‘accidentally’ took the wrong phone. He stumbled on his words probably not expecting this to happen. While he was thinking of the right thing to say and eventually he said ‘Gosh you know what I did! It was so confusing in there. I must have grabbed the wrong phone.’”
