My aunt told me this story a couple of weeks ago. It happened to her when she was in her thirties and pregnant with my older cousin.

She was at the grocery store to stock up for the week, and she was going up and down the aisles, just grabbing the usual items and placing them in her cart. She was rounding the corner of one aisle, when a man walked up to her. He looked very out-of-place, as he was dressed in a green flannel shirt and some denim overalls, and he had a bushy brown beard and a balding head. Most certainly not a man you're likely to see in a Birmingham grocery store. But he walked right up to her, and as she was staring at him nervously he leaned over and pointed to her purse and said, "You might want to hold onto that." He winked and then walked down the aisle she was headed for, but when she turned her cart onto it, he was nowhere in sight.

Being a level-headed young woman, she disregarded his comment, but started to pay close attention to her purse, which was sitting in the front of her cart. All the sudden a couple of teenaged boys walked quickly past her. They seemed to be subtly following an elderly woman who had placed her purse in her cart. They rounded the corner, out of sight, and my aunt decided not to worry about them. But about five minutes later, as she was headed down another aisle, the elderly woman, no longer pushing a cart, came walking towards her, asking, "Have you seen my purse? I got up to pay and realized I didn't have it with me." My aunt felt her heart stop. The boys had taken the woman's purse, just like the man had warned my aunt they would! I don't think anyone ever found the thieves, but my aunt offered to pay for the woman's groceries.

To this day she believes that the man in overalls, however, oddly dressed, was her guardian angel.