AUSTIN -- An Austin woman got a big thank you from police Tuesday night after she helped bring down a burglary ring.
Late last month, Catherine, who asked her last name not be used, was leaving her parents' North Austin home when she noticed something suspicious.
"I saw a strange vehicle, and I knew it didn't belong in the neighborhood," said Catherine.
It was a pickup truck oddly parked on the street.
"My intuition just told me something is out of order here," she said.
The driver told her he was waiting to hear back from a friend.
"I didn't verbalize to him that I thought that was a bunch of baloney," she said.
Catherine says she wrote down the vehicle description and license plate in full view of the driver. As he drove away and parked one street over, she followed him in her own vehicle.
"And this is when I did something really stupid," she said. "I pulled up to the truck, and I motioned to him. As he rolled his window down I said, 'If you are up to no good, then I think we have a problem.'"
Catherine said the driver didn't react, so she left and went to work. Later she learned her parents' neighbors had indeed been burglarized. It turns out, while she was confronting the driver, police say his accomplices were inside burglarizing the home.
"These folks were responsible for several burglaries," said Commander Phil Crochet, with the Austin Police Department.
Once she learned of the burglary, Catherine gave police the information she had.
"This was how they were making their living, so this was a substantial ring she helped us break up," said Crochet.
For her efforts, Catherine was honored by APD at a Commanders Forum Tuesday night.
"I feel honored," she said. "I feel flattered. I don't think I am a hero. I think I just did what anybody else would do. I hope that if the shoe was on the other foot and my house was being burglarized and one of my neighbors saw something, they would make a note and say something. Because you never know when it is going to happen to you."
