A Hug to Stop a Bank Robber

“Hmm,” Michael Armus muttered to himself. He’d just set foot into the Bank of the West in Woodland, California, and felt the tension. “Something’s not right.”

It was a little before 11 on a sunny May morning in 2023, and the 69-year-old retired auto-body painter was there to deposit a check.

Normally, whenever Armus visited, he’d be greeted with loud salvos of “Hi, Mr. Armus!” from the tellers, with whom he loved to banter and share his admittedly corny jokes.

But today, none of the tellers acknowledged him. Nor did the bank’s manager, who sat at his desk with his head down and seemed to be whispering into his telephone. As Armus approached the teller windows, he noticed the three employees had similar worried looks on their faces. He heard one teller whisper to another, “He’s got a note.”

Armus looked to his left and noticed a man at another window with his striped T-shirt pulled up to partially conceal his face. This is a robbery, thought Armus.

He heard the man say, “I don’t want to hurt anybody.” Minutes earlier, the man had passed a note to the teller demanding cash and saying he had a gun. Armus looked again and the man’s shirt had dropped a bit, exposing more of his face.

I’ve seen this guy! thought Armus. He recognized the would-be robber as someone he’d passed several times on a street corner reading aloud from his Bible and preaching to passersby. Suddenly, instead of being frightened, Armus felt compassion for him, and a thought popped into his head: Maybe I can help.

He walked over to the man, 43-year-old Eduardo Plasencia, and calmly asked, “What’s wrong? Don’t you have a job?”

Startled, Plasencia looked at Armus and exclaimed, “There is nothing in this town for me. Nothing!” Then, with tears streaming down his face, he said, “I just want to go to prison.”

“I heard something in his voice,” Armus explains. “I imagined how desperate he had to be to be throwing his life away like this. I’ve been down and out also. Been to prison. My life was a mess. But I got another chance. I know what it’s like to feel hopeless and helpless. And I could hear those feelings in Eduardo’s voice.”

“Let the cops arrest me,” Plasencia said. Armus knew the tellers were terrified, and he wanted to get Plasencia out of the bank. Surprising everyone, he put his arm around Plasencia and said, “Let’s go outside and talk about this.”

Remarkably, Plasencia agreed and the two walked out of the bank. Once outside, Armus wrapped the man in a bear hug, and Plasencia began to sob in his embrace.

The two might have stood like that for hours had the Woodland police not shown up with rifles drawn and ordered both men, “Get down on the ground!” It would be 45 minutes before police realized Armus was not involved in the bank robbery and released him.

It turned out that Eduardo Plasencia, who was eventually charged with attempted robbery, never had a gun. But Armus didn’t know that. As far as the Woodland police were concerned, Armus was “a quick-thinking and brave customer who helped de-escalate a tense situation.”

Armus was far more modest, saying, “I felt Eduardo’s pain and I wanted to help.”

And help he does. He has long volunteered to feed homeless people, and he keeps pillows and blankets in his car to pass out to those he sees living on the streets.

“Love overcomes all things, and the world needs more compassion,” he says. “Try to be kind to somebody; it makes a difference.”