"Miracle Move" Helps Police Capture Burglary Suspect

Aimee Herd : Feb 14, 2013
Kai Porter – KPTV.com

"'I can do that,' I said to myself, not thinking that I'm an 82-year-old man and he was maybe 30, if that." -Terry Miracle

(Longview, WA)—The Apostle Paul told his young protégé Timothy in his first letter to him, not to let anyone think less of him because of his youth.

Perhaps this can also go for the elderly—we shouldn't count someone out because of their older age; and Terry Miracle can be the example of this.

Terry, 82, was pulling weeds in his garden last week when he overheard the commotion of police chasing a suspected burglar. (Photo: Terry Miracle/KPTV News)

Hearing his home address being yelled out, Terry got up to investigate when suddenly he saw the man police were chasing duck into his backyard.

"He was looking back to see how close the police were and he didn't see me at all," Terry told reporters from KPTV News.

In an instant Terry, remembering a move from high school football he'd learned 65 years before, ran toward the suspect and aptly applied his "cross body block."

Forgetting his octogenarian status, Terry says he just thought, "I can do that." (Never mind that his last name is "Miracle")

"You always lift your knee and spread it out a ways," he explained. "And I did that kind of atomically I guess. I caught him in the knees and he went down."

That provided just enough time for police to catch up to the suspect and arrest him.

Since then, Terry has become quite the local celebrity, and was honored with a standing ovation in his church on Sunday.

But Terry—who admits he's a little sore—doesn't consider himself a hero. He says, "I would think of myself, at best, as a person that saw something that needed to done, so I did it."