A chase turned into a coffee date when an Edmonton woman treated an alleged thief to a beverage shortly after confronting him for stealing a wallet.

Tess Aboughoushe said she was out for a run when she heard a woman’s call for help and saw a man take off down the street in broad daylight last week. She sprang into action, chased him down an alley, and found the man hiding behind a dumpster.

“He says, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I’m so sorry. Please take it,’” Aboughoushe told CTV Edmonton on Sunday.

She said the woman who owns the wallet was in the middle of giving the panhandling man money when he snatched it from her hands. Aboughoushe wrote in an Instagram post that the woman hugged her and wished her a happy Valentine’s Day for returning her property.

With her adrenaline still pumping, Aboughoushe then snapped a photo of the man for evidence before bringing him to a nearby coffee shop for a large cup of Joe. She said the man appeared to be down on his luck and expressed regret for his actions.

“If you treat people like they are human, you hope they will respond in kind,” she said.

Aboughoushe said she filed a police report, but does not expect charges to be laid.

She now admits that she was lucky that her sudden burst of heroism did not end differently.

“Maybe with all the adrenaline I could have taken down a full-grown man, but I don’t know. Probably not,” she said. “It was a little reckless.”

With a report from CTV Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson