Yes. It was in a subway station in Boston—Symphony, one of the few where you don’t (didn’t) enter through a turnstile but just walk in and then pay your fare on the train. I don’t know how it is now.
Two teenagers who’d been lurking nearby suddenly accosted me. (They really were actively lurking.) One put a blade to my throat and the other grabbed my shoulder bag. I was perpetually impecunious, but I’d put together enough cash to take my mother out to dinner for her birthday. That’s where I was going. The idea that somebody would just come along and steal that from me made me so mad that I grabbed the bag right back, completely oblivious to the danger.
“You can’t take it,” I said. “I’ll give it to you.” I opened my wallet and gave them all the cash I had, except that I insisted they leave me enough for trolley fare.
But I kept my purse, with all my important cards, my checkbook, etc., and together those things were probably worth more than the approximately $50 they took from me. This was about 1973, and $50 was a lot of money.
They did miss a $70 negotiable, unsigned money order that was beneath my wallet, all I had to live on for the next two weeks. Anybody could have signed it and cashed it.