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2 women have 'soleful' encounters with a stranger Man took shoes off both, sniffed them, victims say Friday, September 07, 2001 By Jan Ackerman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Women of the 'Burg, beware.
A predator with a foot fetish is on the loose. He may try to pilfer your pumps, molest your mules or sniff your slides.
Yesterday morning, as two women were heading to their Downtown offices, a middle-age man accosted them, removed a shoe from each, and sniffed them.
"I mean, he really sniffed my shoes. It was like a religious experience for him," said one of the victims, a 44-year-old graphic artist who didn't want her name to be used.
As she stepped into the elevator of her office building at 4 Smithfield St. at about 8 a.m., the man with the foot fetish also got on. He pushed the button for the sixth floor, which is dark and unoccupied, and she pushed the button for the 11th floor.
"He asked me how I was doing. He said, 'I like your shoes,' " said the woman, who was wearing black slides.
"I thought it was a strange comment, but I said 'Thank you,' " she said. "He said, 'Can you take one of your shoes off?' I said no."
Undaunted by her refusal, the man knelt down on the floor of the elevator, took off one of her shoes and smelled it.
"He really smelled my shoe, like it was a bouquet of flowers," the woman said.
When the elevator stopped on the sixth floor and the door opened to the dark, unused office area, the woman got scared.
"I thought I was going to be assaulted," she said.
But she wasn't.
The man said good-bye and got off. The woman took the elevator to her office and called police.
The second woman, Patty Cohen, 42, of Plum, was accosted on Smithfield Street as she walked to work in her slides.
"Someone came up behind me. He kicked the back of my heel and stepped on the back of my shoe. I fell out of my shoe and stumbled forward," said Cohen, a corporate meeting and event planner.
The man apologized and asked Cohen if she was okay. Then he grabbed her shoe and put it up to his nose.
"I lunged at him and said, 'Give me my shoe. What do you think you are doing, you weirdo?" Cohen said.
She put the shoe back on. He smiled at her.
Cohen called police from her office. The policeman who came to talk to her said he would take a report, but the man didn't commit a crime.
"I said, 'He is sick. He needs help,' " said Cohen, who was disheartened by the policeman's casual response to what she viewed as deviant behavior.
"I gave a good description," Cohen said.
Cohen said the man was about 50 years old, about 5 feet 10 inches tall, and was slightly stocky, with a round face and brownish, mustard-colored hair. She said he was dressed in khaki pants and a T-shirt with a logo on it.
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