ORDEAL: Yvonne Sherwell-Demakopoulos (right) yesterday relives her nightmare. She was mugged (left) in her Meatpacking District building. (
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A heartless thief mugged an elderly Manhattan woman and stole her heirloom wedding ring — as her husband lay on his deathbed in a hospital.
Petite former Shakespearean actress Yvonne Sherwell-Demakopoulos, 85, yesterday said she was coming home from a night out with friends Saturday at around 10:50 p.m. when the creep followed her into the elevator of her West 13th Street building in the Meatpacking District.
The hulking thug can be seen on surveillance video waving to the older woman as if he were a friend in the lobby of her well-heeled building. He “asked for [a resident] by their name, and I didn’t recognize it,’’ she said.
“I said I would go check, and he followed me into the elevator.
“He was trying to trick me,’’ she said. “He got in and pushed me down. I fell on my arm, but luckily my coat is like a blanket.”
The brute then demanded that the startled woman hand over her black shoulder bag — at which point he noticed the wedding ring, she said.
“My hand was out, and he saw it. He took it off me. I said, ‘Please, it’s my wedding ring.’ He took it. Dirty dog.
“It was Greek. It was an heirloom,’’ she said of the ring. “It belonged to my husband’s great-grandmother. [The robber] won’t get much for it, but it meant . . . the world to me.”
Sherwell-Demakopoulos said her beloved husband, Christos, 80, is in a nursing home after having suffered a massive stroke last month. He also suffers from Parkinson’s disease and is in his last days, she said.
She said she was out that evening to get her mind off of her hubby.
“I was indulging myself that night with friends because I was so upset with my husband being in the hospital,” she said.
The couple have been together for about 20 years, and married for nine years.
After being robbed, the victim called her daughter.
“She was hysterical,” daughter Candela Prol said. “She said, ‘I was mugged, and he took my wedding ring!’ That’s when she really started to cry.”
Sherwell-Demakopoulos, who moved to New York from Waterbury, Conn., at the age of 19, said that as a now-longtime New Yorker, she has been mugged before.
“It’s New York,” the spunky octogenarian shrugged.
Of her latest attacker, she said, “Wouldn’t that be neat if they caught him? It’s just unbelievable all this horror happens at the same time.”