Woodworth clobbered the would-be thief with her bag until he ran away, police said.
"I didn't have my hearing aid in, and I thought he said that he was going to take my pulse," Woodworth said. "Then he said it again, that he was going to take my purse, and I said, 'No, you're not."'
She fought off the man in a department store parking lot Saturday afternoon, authorities said.
Police arrested a 20-year-old suspect and charged him with robbery, felony theft, assault, aggravated menacing, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Sgt. Tim Hanus said women of Woodworth's age shouldn't try to fight attackers. Woodworth said she didn't think her age was much of a factor.
"I'll be 92 in August and I guess I've got more nerve now than when I was younger," she said.
MUNSTER, Ind. - Bob Markovich has his wedding ring back, just in time for his 20th anniversary.
Markovich lost the ring 11 years ago as he was getting ready to move. After scouring the yard and the garbage cans, he gave up the search.
But Grace Debrowa, the home's second owner since the Markoviches moved out, found the gold band while raking the backyard recently. She was able to contact Markovich's mother, who helped her son get his ring back.
Soon after, Bob Markovich's wife, Karen, placed the ring on his finger. The couple celebrates 20 years of marriage this week.
For her detective work, Bob Markovich gave Debrowa $20 and a card.
"For her to go the extra mile like that, I thought that was really spectacular," he said.
LINCOLN, Neb. - Angry he is.
Jason Scott wants his "Star Wars" collection back, including his 12-inch model of a beast called a tauntaun and his C3PO and Darth Vader carrying cases.
And especially the original and rare "blue snaggletooth" figure that showed up in the first film's cantina scene.
Scott said Monday that he's posted a $1,000 reward for his stuff, which was stolen last week from his padlocked storage unit inside his Lincoln apartment building.
"These figures are vintage," he said. "Some were the hard-to-find 1985 figures" - like a Death Star play set, for example.
Scott said he's posted reward notices around his apartment complex and remains hopeful, but the loss is uninsured.
He'd been collecting seriously since 1994, and he said his 92-piece collection of action figures is only five short of the 97 total. He estimated the 92 pieces together could fetch $3,500 or more in an Internet auction.
"It would be nice if the person just set the stuff back on my doorstep," Scott said. "Fifty percent of it is I want the person to get busted, but I want the stuff back more," he said.
SANTA ROSA, Calif. - Authorities are on the lookout for pistil-packing activists who apparently planted endangered wildflowers in order to block a housing development.
The state Department of Fish and Game has determined that Sebastopol meadowfoam discovered in the Laguna Vista subdivision in Sebastopol was deliberately transplanted from another location.
"This is a very unusual situation," said department botanist Gene Cooley. "I've never known a rare plant to be introduced to a site to thwart development before."
The 145-unit Laguna Vista site, which borders a Fish and Game preserve, has been hotly contested by environmentalists concerned about nearby wetlands.
State officials launched a criminal investigation last week to determine who planted the wildflower, listed by the state and federal governments as endangered, which can present major obstacles to development.
So far, there aren't any suspects. And not everyone agrees with the state's finding.
Phil Northen, a Sonoma State University conservation biologist who first identified the 22 plants spotted on the 21-acre site, said he didn't believe they were transplants.
SYDNEY, Australia - There must have been something fishy about the way she walked.
Customs officials said Monday they stopped a woman as she arrived Friday in the southern city of Melbourne on a flight from Singapore and found 51 live tropical fish allegedly hidden in a specially designed apron under her skirt.
"During the search customs officers became suspicious after hearing 'flipping' noises coming from the vicinity of her waist," the Australian Customs Service said in a press release. "An examination revealed 15 plastic water-filled bags holding fish allegedly concealed inside a purpose-built apron."
The species of fish was not immediately known, but customs officials warned they could carry diseases that could decimate Australian fish if they escaped into local rivers.
Customs officers will charge the woman once they establish what species the fish are. If convicted of smuggling wildlife, she faces a fine of up to U.S. $83,617 and could also get a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
SANTA ROSA, Calif. - Good grief! Charlie Brown, where are you?
A six-foot statue of the lovable "Peanuts" cartoon character has mysteriously disappeared from an honored spot in front of a restaurant here.
"I can't believe it," said Bob Forsyth, owner of Michele's Restaurant in downtown Santa Rosa. "It's just wrong. It's Charlie Brown."
He's offering a $2,500 reward for the return of the statue, which is estimated to weigh as much as 300 pounds.
The statue, stolen early Saturday, features the quirky bald-headed boy wearing a chef's hat and wielding a spatula.
The pilfered statue was one of 55 Charlie Browns erected around the city as part of a public art project and fund-raiser. Each statue portrays the loser-hero in a different role.
There are no suspects, Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Lisa Banayat said, although investigators did gather some evidence that they hope will help solve the case.
"Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz lived in Santa Rosa until his death five years ago at the age of 77.
MOSCOW - In this game, everyone stinks and hogging the ball is to be expected.
Ten squealing, wriggling piglets pushed - and licked - a soccer ball around a small caged pen Sunday in what organizers said was Russia's first-ever "pig-ball" championships.
The event, staged as part of an agricultural exhibition on Moscow's outskirts, is set up like soccer, with two teams of five piglets. Instead of goals, the teams try to move the ball into painted, half-circles located at the pen's corners. To move things along, the ball is slathered in mashed carrots.
Whether there's any athletic skill involved - aside from aggressive licking - is an open question.
"Why pigs?" asked Nariner Bagmanyan, one of the event's organizers. "It's more interesting and you know, this kind of thing doesn't happen anywhere."
SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea's national airline thinks so highly of the country's pioneering stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk that it has awarded him and his wife free first class flights for a decade.
Calling Hwang a "national treasure," Korean Air Chairman Cho Yang-ho said in a statement Friday that he hoped the flight benefits will contribute to his research.
Hwang has said he normally travels in economy class to save money in his limited research budgets.
The airline awarded Hwang and his wife a certificate Friday granting them both 10 years of first class travel for free, said Lee Hyung-woo, a manager at the airline.
A professor at Seoul National University, Hwang recently grabbed the world's attention by concocting stem cell lines that genetically match patients in need. His team also successfully cloned a human embryo last year.
Korean Air has previously granted similar flying perks to former national soccer coach Gus Hiddink and Bae Yong-joon, an actor widely popular in Japan.
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