Joy Adalia
Netizen Katherine (family name withheld) had a rather terrifying but funny experience with a cellphone snatcher. She narrated on Facebook how a thief had snatched her cellphone, a Samsung Galaxy J5, from her hands.
As she watched the snatcher run away as fast as he could, Katherine had a sudden “eureka” moment and shouted, “Hoy! Teka! Bebenta mo yan di ba? Ako na lang bibili!” (Hey! Wait up! You are going to sell that phone, right? I’ll be the one to buy it!)
Taken aback by the strange offer, the snatcher stopped running and asked, “Magkano?” (How much?)
Katherine quickly said, “Sang libo.” (P1,000)
As if insulted by the offer, the snatcher said, “Anuka! Dalawang libo!” (Are you serious? P2,000!)
But Katherine was unfazed. She said, “Sim cards ko na lang bilhin ko! Sayo na cellphone ko!” (I will just buy the sim cards! You can have my phone!)
The greedy snatcher replied, “Tatagal pa tayo sa pagtanggal ng sim cards; sige labas mo sanglibo mo.” (We’ll waste time by taking out the sim cards; all right, you give me the P1,000.)
With that, Katherine gave the crook her money and he gave her the cellphone back. She bought her own cellphone from the smiling snatcher.
While the experience was funny in retrospect, Katherine admitted that she was shaken but tried not to show it.
Some people might say that “buying” the phone back would only be encouraging these thieves to keep preying on innocent people. But for Katherine, it saved her a whole lot of trouble of keeping her information private and tracking down her contacts’ numbers.
In a short interview with The DailyPedia, Katherine said that P1,000 is but a small price to pay because her sim cards and whatever data that was on her phone were definitely worth more than that to her. She also revealed that she previously had another cellphone snatched from her and she wasn’t able to retrieve the phone or the data on it.
