The other day I was talking with David Cooke and the conversation turned to bank robberies – not any that we had perpetrated, but the one that he foiled a while back.
You might remember Cooke’s name from the days when he fished the FLW Tour. Like a lot of other pros, the North Carolina angler found himself without a major sponsor when the dip in the economy began in the latter part of 2008, and he sat out the last couple of seasons. He’s hopeful he’ll get back in the game next year and biding his time now with the occasional BFL event.
Anyway, back to the bank robbery. Cooke had just cashed a check at the drive-in window of a bank in Denver, N.C. near his home, when, as he began to pull away, he saw three men enter the bank’s front door, draw three semi-automatic pistols and point them menacingly at customers and employees.
Cooke immediately raced to the opposite side of the street and dialed 911 on his cell phone. He told the operator that a bank robbery was occurring and gave her the address. She then told him to stay on the line while she notified law enforcement. While waiting for the police to show up, Cooke provided the operator with a brief description of the robbers and what they were wearing.
“Within a couple of minutes I saw a deputy sheriff’s car come along, but I knew that the deputy hadn’t been notified because it had just happened,” recalls Cooke. “So I whipped my 4-wheel drive pickup across the street median and blocked the deputy. He looked at me like I was crazy, but then I told him what was going on he drew his gun and then got on the radio to report it. About that time, the robbers came out the front door with a big backpack full of money, saw us, and took off running the other way.”
Without stopping to think about it, Cooke hopped back in his truck and drove after the bank robbers. The deputy went inside the bank to see if there were any injuries. Cooke still had the 911 operator on the line, and as he drove along he provided her a running report on where the robbers were and what they were doing.
“I saw them dump their pistols in the first dumpster they came to, and another block away they peeled off their outer clothes,” says Cooke. “Finally they threw the backpack stuffed with money into another dumpster at the corner of a strip mall and took off running into a woods. About that time, 20 cop cars or so showed up all at once and deputies and state police boiled out everywhere. An hour or so later, the three guys were handcuffed and on their way to the lockup.”
Acknowledging that he was in the right place for the people in the bank and in the wrong place for the robbers, Cooke says that the thieves didn’t appear to be masters of their chosen profession.
“It was all kind of comical, the way the robbers went about it,” Cooke adds. “They just walked in there without checking anything, like it was going to be as easy as pie. Still, I found out later that nobody in the bank triggered the silent alarm, and I was the only one to notify the police through 911. I was kind of glad I hadn’t gone in the bank to cash the check.”
Several days later, Cooke got a call from the bank’s central office in Charlotte. The person who phoned thanked Cooke profusely for his intervention, though stopping short of offering him a reward for the pile of money he saved the bank. No sour grapes for Cooke, though; he figures he didn’t do anything extraordinarily different from what the average citizen would do.
“I guarantee you that nowadays when I go in a bank, I keep my eyes peeled. You just never know when you’re going to walk into the middle of something bad,” he concludes.
Hopefully, if and when you do, somebody like Cooke will be there too.