Kim Komenich says he was getting ready to leave the Wells Fargo along Market Street in San Jose on Monday, when he noticed a customer standing next to him hand a teller a note. Komenich looked over his shoulder and saw it said something about a gun.
"So I decided in this case, it looked like something I could handle, and rather than let it escalate, I decided to step in and do something," he said. "So I just grabbed him and gave him a big bear hug."
He was able to hold the would-be robber until police arrived. No gun was ever found.
Komenich used to work as a news photographer before becoming a journalism professor. He says that experience -- where he often covered bank robberies for the San Francisco Examiner -- helped keep him calm.
