First, you should know, he does not steal any material goods. But he does weigh about 245 pounds and he tricks athletes into giving h him a piggy back ride. (Why do they call it a piggy back ride, anyway?)
Our local news station has the headline: “A 5-State Ban For ‘Piggyback Bandit’” which makes me wonder how you “ban” a strange guy who is tricking people into giving him piggy back rides.
This is all very confusing.
Mr. Piggyback shows up at High School sports games. He wears appropriate clothing and behaves appropriately to make everybody think he’s been there all along and is an assistant or helper or something, helps lay out uniforms, get the gear ready. Now and then he gives a kid a shoulder massage. He either is or pretends to be “… limited or handicapped. I think he plays an empathy card, so to speak,” says one coach who’s team was … ridden, I guess … by the Piggyback Bandit.
Apparently, the offending personage is known. He is Sherwin Shayegan, of Bothell Washington. The 28 year old Piggy Back Rider has operated in Washington and Oregon but he is now working through other states, hitting Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota.
Shayegan has asked for piggybacks, attempted to pay for piggybacks and just sprung one upon an unsuspecting kid. He favors basketball games, but he also has leapt onto hockey, soccer and football players.
He has pretended to interview athletes for a term paper, acted as a team manager or just tried to blend in with the crowd for a piggyback payoff.
Shayegan has been asked to comment but has declined. He has been arrested for jumping on athletes in Helena, Montana.
He has been hanging around Minnesota games for the last several days but Minnesotans are pretty cagey folks so they figured it out and eye him suspiciously, which keeps him off the athletics. Never underestimate the power of non-verbal passive aggressiveness.
He might have gone back to Washington. But who knows. Better keep an eye out.
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…maybe he’s a priest?
That story reminds me of a guy who used to hang out around a coffee house I worked at who would look for guys wearing crosses (so he could play on their Christian sympathy) and say he was depressed, but would feel better if he was tickled. We called him Tickle-Me Robert. He became a problem because he would loiter and harass the customers. One night he came in and passed out on one of the couches, so we called the police and got a trespass order against him. Apparently, he was off his meds. It sounds like this Piggyback guy could use a psyche eval.