A feisty 91-year-old Long Island pharmacy cashier fought with a robber — then insisted on finishing her work shift.
“I want him to get caught because I want to smack him,” said Florence Critelli after completing her day’s work at the Rite Aid Pharmacy in East Northport.
Critelli was behind the register just before 11 a.m. when a man gave her a dollar for a candy bar.
When she opened the register to get his change, the thief reached over and helped himself to a handful of cash.
Critelli leaped into action.
“I grabbed his hand to stop him from taking the money and I just screamed,” she said.
The brutal bandit then punched her in the chest and then ran out of the store with an unknown amount of cash.
“He hit me good,” Critelli said. “But it didn’t hurt.”
She proved it by refusing medical attention when authorities arrived.
Then she went back to work.
“They asked me if I wanted to come home after it happened,” she said.
“I didn’t want to come home. What was I going to do but sit there and be bored?”
Critelli finished up at around 5:30 p.m. and rejected her manager’s suggestion that she ask her son to come get her.
She chose, instead, to drive herself home.
But that’s not unusual for Critelli, who works a 35-hour week at the pharmacy, where she’s been a valued employee for 17 years.
Before that, she worked at the Bulova Watch Co. in Queens for 16 years.
Critelli said she keeps working because she likes to stay active, not because she needs the money.
“If you just stay home every day, you feel like you can’t do anything and you don’t want to do anything,” she said.
“It’s just not the right way to be.”
When she’s not ringing up sales, Critelli enjoys playing the slots in Atlantic City or at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut.
She also knits and crochets mittens that are distributed to needy Long Islanders.
She’s been married twice and has two children, seven grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
Cops describe her assailant as white, clean-shaven, about 5 feet, 8 inches tall, with a thin build. He sports tattoos of rings on his fingers.
“He looked pretty dirty, Critelli said.