Mom hunts down alleged pickpocketer using 'Find My Friends' app to track stolen AirPods, her daughter says

A mom turns the tables on her alleged pickpocketers during a trip to Venice, Italy with her husband.

What we know:

The woman's daughter, Karis McElroy, shared the viral story on TikTok. According to McElroy, her mom and her stepfather happened to be in Venice before the couple were going to jump on a cruise across the Mediterranean Sea.

According to McElroy, three crowd crowded around her mom while she was trying to get to her Airbnb. When the mom made it to the couple's Airbnb, she noticed that her book bag was unzipped and her water bottle and purse were missing from the bag, her daughter explained in a social media post.

"She knows to look out for pickpocketers," McElroy explained in the post.

McElroy adds the purse contained her passport, her credit cards, cash and a pair of AirPod Bluetooth headphones. She then outlined her mom's quick thinking once she realized may have gotten targeted by alleged pickpocketers.

"She was frantic trying to get this back. Her and my stepdad immediately started tracking her purse through her AirPods on ‘Find My Friends’ and they were able to track it down back to those three girls because my mom already knew like these people must have been it," McElroy said of her mom.

Once she found the three teenage girls, the mom grabbed one of the girls by her ponytail and waited until police arrived. The second girl stayed at the scene while the third girl ran off with McElroy's mom's purse, the daughter said.

Messed with the wrong mom

Karis' mom was not messing around – especially considering the fact that her passport allegedly got stolen.

In a separate video shared by McElroy, her mom was seen grabbing one of the alleged pickpocketers by her hair. The teen detained by McElroy's mom started screaming in the video, but Karis' mom wasn't having it.

"I have eight kids," the mom said. "You don't get to me."

McElroy said her stepdad was enlisted to help get his wife's stuff back as the mom waited for police to arrive. According to the daughter, the third suspect had hopped on a train and left the mom's stolen purse at a U.S. liaison office inside an airport. 

The liaison office's staff contacted police back home in the U.S. in hopes of relaying the whereabouts of McElroy's mom's purse. A police officer went to McElroy's parents' home in North Carolina and – while the couple was obviously not home while the cops were outside the house – a neighbor was able to get a hold of the vacationing couple to let them know that all the mom's stuff – including the passport and credit cards – were all at the airport in Italy.

Local perspective:

Italian news outlet, Il Messaggero, reports the teen girl held by the ponytail was 14 years old and was arrested by police. The teen girl was released on bail two days after the incident, Il Messaggero reports.

This story was reported from Los Angeles.