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'I outsmarted him,' burglary victim says

Nettiebelle Smith wakes up early Tuesday to find two burglars in her home. She puts up a struggle, but one helps her to a chair to find her cigarettes. She tells the story again and again Wednesday.

By STEVE THOMPSON
Published August 25, 2005

	[Times photo: Janel Schroeder-Norton]
	Nettiebelle Smith, 83, shows the bruises on her arm and the hand injury she received in an encounter with two burglars in her New Port Richey home early Tuesday. The men ransacked her house but found no money. Instead, they made off with her minivan, which was later recovered. The men have not been found.

NEW PORT RICHEY - The television news trucks Wednesday came and went, but Nettiebelle Smith didn't tire of telling the story.

Fresh out of the hospital, the 83-year-old described her encounter early Tuesday with the two thugs who broke into her home.

She held up her arm to display red blotches. They were left from the struggle that ensued after she awoke to find a man shoving her face into her pillow.

"I pinched him a couple or three times, and he let go of me," she said.

She showed the bandage on her hand, covering torn flesh where one of the men grabbed her.

"I think it cut the skin because I'm so old and it's so skinny," she said. "And it just peeled it right away."

The men wore dark knit caps and covered their faces with red bandanas.

But one of them must have felt a pang of guilt when he saw the blood on her hand. He brought her a paper towel to press on it.

The 115-pound widow told him she wanted the towel wet. So he stepped over to the kitchen sink, past the butterflies made of yarn on her refrigerator, to put some water on it for her.

She told him she wanted a cigarette, so he helped her to the living room chair to find her pack of Winstons.

The burglars spent about an hour there, turning her home of 34 years inside-out looking for cash. All the while, she didn't tell them she had some in her purse. It was under the kitchen table. At one point, she took a seat by it, she said, concealing it from their view.

"I outsmarted him," she said. "I don't even know how I did it."

They rifled through her box of recipes on the kitchen counter, thinking money could be stashed inside. None was.

"Dear God," she said she kept praying, "don't let them kill me."

Finally, the men grabbed her keys and took off in her Plymouth minivan. She went to the neighbors' house for help. Authorities found the minivan about a mile away but still have not arrested the assailants.

On Wednesday, though her face was bruised and her neck sore, Mrs. Smith felt up to recounting her history.

She got the name Nettiebelle because it was the name of one of her mother's favorite teachers.

She grew up in Michigan, maiden name Natzke, with two sisters and a brother.

At about 10, after surgery on her hip because of rheumatic fever, she spent almost a year in bed with a cast from her chest to her toes.

As a teenager, she hated her first name and acquired the nickname "Ned." She married Ivan T. Smith, who got the nickname tattooed on his arm inside a heart.

Smith fought in the Pacific islands during World War II. Mrs. Smith once got a letter from the military saying he was dead. But then she got a letter from her husband, and he wasn't dead after all. He returned with a Bronze Star and a Navy Cross.

Despite her childhood illness, Mrs. Smith went on to become New Port Richey's top female bowler in the 1970s, with an average of 178, she said.

Her husband died in 1997.

During the past couple of years, she has had two minor strokes that caused her to lose some strength in her left leg.

Because of her leg, she hasn't been able to drive lately. But she keeps the minivan in her driveway, for when she gets her strength back.

[Last modified August 25, 2005, 01:23:19]