Even after reading books, magazines, and hearing warnings over the loud speakers on trains and buses, I never believed it would happen to me.

Coming from a very safe and small town like Aspen, being pickpocketed is a very foreign concept to me. We live in an extremely popular tourist destination, but thankfully no local Aspenites see pickpocketing as a lucrative career. Tourists in Aspen can take in the beautiful landscapes without having to keep a close eye on their backpacks, phones, and wallets at the same. Most tourists feel so safe that they quickly get into the Aspen lifestyle and don’t even lock their cars while sightseeing around the fascinating area. Although Lisbon, Portugal, is just as beautiful a city in a very different way, some people choose to make a living pickpocketing the tourists admiring the hundreds of captivating buildings and landmarks the city has to offer. They seem to know just the right places to be to steal the unsuspecting tourists wallets full of cash and valuable items. From the outsides of incredible cathedrals, parks jam packed with people, or crowded trams and buses, the pickpockets seem to be everywhere.

While in Portugal in July of this summer, my family and I were pickpocketed on a very crowded tram. It was late afternoon after a busy day of walking the cobbled streets visiting all the sights in Lisbon. Although we had been warned about the pickpockets over and over again throughout the day, we never took it seriously until it was too late. We read tourist books and newspapers warning us; even a local fruit seller on the streets of Lisbon told us to always keep our bags in front of us so we could see them at all times. Everything that happened that day seemed to indicate that this could happen to us, but we did not realize it until my mom’s wallet was taken out of her purse within a few hours of us arriving in the city.

Getting back on a tram after looking at San George’s castle, my mom looked in a panic. My sister and I had no idea what was going on, until she told us she no longer had her wallet. We looked on the streets and around benches where we had stood for the last 10 minutes until it finally clicked, the wallet was gone. We were far away from our hotel and quickly realized we could not get on any trams or busses because our train tickets, money, credit card, and even my mom’s driver’s license were in that small wallet.

Stopping to gather our thoughts, we decided to get into a taxi as we gave the driver the address to our hotel. Once we made it back to the hotel we did our best to communicate to him that we had to go and ask the front desk to borrow money. This was a challenge because our Portuguese is very minimal. We asked the man at the front desk for money, and without hesitation he gave us cash to pay the driver waiting outside. The man at the front desk explained to us they deal with this unfortunate situation daily, and said trams are the most common place for pickpockets to steal.

After this situation, I realized how lucky I am to live in a safe place like Aspen. We hike, bike, and sightsee in many different places and always feel safe while doing so. Although this may have seemed extremely unfortunate at the time, I’m glad it was able to open my eyes to a whole different world in which people will do anything to survive.