Cops: Aide stole patient's coin collection

It was no penny-ante crime, according to police.

Home-health aide Sonia Walsh pinched a lot more than pennies from the home of her patient, an 81-year-old woman in North Hills, in 2009, they said. She took what has been appraised as $130,000 in commemorative coins, police said Wednesday as they announced Walsh's arrest on charges that include grand larceny.

The patient's son dropped a dime on Walsh after the family's surveillance video caught her in the home's coin-storage room loading bags with his late father's cherished collection, said Det. Lt. Raymond Coté, head of the Third Squad.

"Lo and behold, you can see Sonia Walsh," said Coté, of the video. The surveillance camera had been installed by the patient's late husband.

The coins showed presidents, first ladies and spacecraft, police said.

In 2009, Walsh, of Far Rockaway, was caught on the video stealing the collection's gold and platinum coins, Coté said. When cops tried to find her, they discovered that she had fled after buying a one-way plane ticket to the island of Jamaica.

Police said Walsh re-entered the United States, and more than a year after the alleged coin theft, she had a new job as a home health aide, where she allegedly stole from an 83-year-old man living in Garden City Park.

In that case, for which Walsh is charged with possession of a forged instrument, she's accused of making a color copy of a check the family gave her, then cashing the copy at a check-cashing store and the original at a bank.

Police tracked her down when Third Squad detectives saw a newspaper ad Walsh placed soliciting new clients.

Det. Robert Abiola called Walsh and set up a ruse: He wanted to interview her for a job as an aide to an ailing parent. Abiola and another detective, Susan Entenmann-Demeo, dressed in street clothes and met with Walsh on Friday behind a Starbucks on Seventh Street in Garden City, where they arrested her.

Walsh was remanded to Nassau County jail in East Meadow Wednesday on the grand larceny charge. The coins haven't been recovered, and detectives fear they may have been sold and melted down.

With Emily Ngo