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Prayer Answered As Stolen Money Found

Somebody stole $13,000 from Joanne Gavlick on Monday. She got almost all of it back on Tuesday.

JASON BEHNKEN / The Tampa Tribune

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By VALERIE KALFRIN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 21, 2007

TAMPA - Joanne Gavlick said she thought of the $13,000 as "God's money" when she withdrew it from her pension to go away and write a spirituality book.

So when a man mugged her Monday outside a Bank of America branch in Carrollwood, Gavlick prayed. She asked God to help detectives find the robber, to keep her from losing her home and to maintain her faith.

On Tuesday, she got what she prayed for.

First, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office called to say about $11,000 of the money had been found. A worker at a Subway sandwich shop at 14351 N. Dale Mabry Highway - less than two blocks from where Gavlick was robbed - spotted the cash in a men's room trash can Monday evening.

The bank confirmed Tuesday that the money was Gavlick's.

Later Tuesday afternoon, detectives arrested Cody Overby, 21, of Tampa, after identifying him from bank surveillance video, the sheriff's office said. Overby was to be booked into Orient Road Jail on charges of felony strong-arm robbery and felony grand theft.

"Wow!" Gavlick, 54, said upon hearing of the arrest.

She was just as stunned to hear earlier that investigators found the cash. "Two days before Thanksgiving; what a story," she said. "Even the detective said you could've kissed it goodbye."

Sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter didn't have a timetable, but said, "I don't think it's going to be a problem getting the money back to her."

Gavlick said she has been disabled since 1999 because of a back problem. Now a prison minister, she shares stories of how faith helped her overcome a drug addiction with inmates at Orient Road Jail and at a state prison in Marion County, she said.

She withdrew the remains of a pension from a job years ago at a Philadelphia law firm to begin anew. She planned to rent an apartment in Mango after a week's stay in Indian Rocks Beach writing a book she's calling "I Got Back Up." "I've had to get back up so many times in my life," she said.

Gavlick wanted cash immediately, so the only option she saw was to cash at least part of the pension check where it was issued - at Wachovia. Her own account was at a different bank but she would have had to wait for the check to clear there before drawing cash from it.

So she visited a Wachovia branch at North Dale Mabry Highway and Fletcher Avenue to open an account and walk away with some cash from the check. But she said the tellers cashed the entire check and gave her the money in "a plain, old, brown lunch bag."

"I didn't want to walk out with all that money," Gavlick said. "I said, 'Do I get an escort?' and they just laughed."

Kathy Harrison, a Wachovia spokeswoman, said she could not disclose details of Gavlick's transaction but said tellers "are trained to caution people it's risky to walk out with a large sum of money."

Gavlick drove to her bank, the Bank of America at 14002 N. Dale Mabry Highway, to deposit what she didn't need. A man approached her after she stepped out of her car and grabbed for the paper bag, investigators said.

They struggled and Gavlick fell. Something told her to let the money go. "He could've had a concealed weapon for all I knew," she said.

Losing her money was "like a dream shot to hell. Just like that," she said Tuesday, snapping her fingers. "I had my future in my hand for one second, and the next second it was gone."

Although she had prayed for the man who robbed her to be caught, Gavlick said she has compassion for him.

"I wish him no harm," she said. "As a minister of the Gospel, I want to see him saved just like anybody else. I hope I can have the privilege of doing that."

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800 or vkalfrin@tampatrib.com.

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