CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Has anything gone missing from your porch recently? You may want to check.
In the past two weeks, several neighbors on the southside in Corpus Christi posted about an older woman stealing items from their porches.
A few neighbors got together to form a Facebook group with hopes to get their stuff back. They decided to call this mysterious thief “Porch Pirate Granny."
“What is in your mind thinking in the morning ‘you know what I’m going to get up and go steal wreaths.’ Like who thinks like that?” says Diane Flores, who had a sunflower wreath stolen from her front porch two weeks ago.
Flores caught the woman on security cameras stealing the wreath which was a present from her daughter.
“I saw her peak into my window, and I thought ‘what is she doing?’ and then she went back and just yanked it off,” Flores said.
Flores’ daughter, Marissa Cisneros, helped her mother post about the thief on Facebook. Their intention with the post was to get the wreath back, but they quickly realized the “porch pirate granny” had stolen from others in the area as well.
Debbie Guerra caught the “porch pirate granny” stealing a meaningful plant from her driveway. Guerra was given the plant at her husband’s funeral about a year ago. The plant froze during the big freeze, but Debbie was able to bring it back to life. She says this is why it was so frustrating to see someone steal it from her.
Not too long after the posts gained attention on Facebook, Debbie was shocked to see her plant had been returned in one piece. Her security footage caught a man in a black hoodie dropping it off in the middle of the night.
The porch pirate granny returned the wreath back to Flores as well. The cameras caught her wearing a big hat walking up to the door and dropping it down before taking off in her car.
Both women could not believe the community’s support.
“If nothing else, it will bring people together and make everybody start looking out for each other and other neighborhoods too," says Guerra.
Both women say they do not intend to get the police involved and were just relieved to have their belongings returned.
However, Flores did express she would speak to the thief if she came forward to understand “why.'
