Hot Like Pepper - Oddity: Sleepy thief caught; woman's bra saves her life - Health & Lifestyle

Health & Lifestyle : Oddity: Sleepy thief caught; woman's bra saves her life

2008/6/23 12:00:00

A thief caught napping in the house he was burglarizing for the second time is under arrest in southern Brazil.

Police spokeswoman Giovana Schafer says 20-year-old Maicon Kovalski broke into a middle-class home in the city of Canoas before daybreak.

He walked away with a television set and other household goods, which she said "he quickly exchanged for crack cocaine."

Schafer says that after apparently smoking some of the crack, Kovalski decided to return to the house to steal more.

Instead he became drowsy and fell "fast asleep" on the living room couch, where the owners of the house found him.

The Power of the BRA

German police say an American hiker stranded in the Bavarian Alps for nearly three days was rescued after using her sports bra as an SOS flag.

Twenty-four-year-old Jessica Bruinsma of Colorado was lifted to safety by helicopter last Thursday after she attracted the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to move timber down the mountain.

Berchtesgaden police officer Lorenz Rasp describes Bruinsma as "a very smart girl" who acted "very resourcefully".

He says "she kept her shirt and jacket for warmth, but thought the sports bra could work as a signal."

She was right. Once lumberjacks spotted the bra on the moving cable, an alpine rescue team was able to track the cable to a ledge where she had fallen.