Alleged con artist always had tale

She's a distraught mother who desperately needs to get her dying son into kidney dialysis.

Or she needs airfare to visit a daughter who was struck by a car in another state.

She's recently widowed. Or divorced. But always, she's broke and in dire need of a cash loan and the kindness of strangers.

Police and prosecutors say that Shirley Sue Urich has spun a similar sob story — with minor variations — to scam dozens of people out of thousands of dollars in Washington and at last a half-dozen other states. She's used dozens of aliases and as many dates of birth and Social Security numbers to stay one step ahead of the law over the years, police said.

But police say they caught up with the 58-year-old woman last week at a Snohomish County casino thanks to a detective's hunch that she has a hankering for gambling.

Today, she's sitting in the Snohomish County Jail, charged with three counts of second-degree theft, and is additionally being held on a state Department of Corrections probation-violation warrant for three additional theft charges.

Lynnwood police Detective Doug Teachworth said he'd heard that Urich was a gambler by nature and he figured that might be a habit she wouldn't give up. Teachworth said he plastered numerous fliers and photos of the woman at casinos throughout the Seattle area.

His hunch paid off last Thursday when two security guards at Quil Ceda Creek Casino in Tulalip, west of Marysville, recognized the woman and called the Snohomish County sheriff's Office, said Lynnwood police spokeswoman Shannon Sessions. Urich was arrested a short time later.

Police said Urich has stolen money for at least two decades from people in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah. She was wanted on numerous warrants for felony theft issued in 2004, police said.

Sessions said Urich typically approached shop owners and ordinary people and posed as a recent widow or a divorcee. She provided "very convincing stories" about needing an immediate cash loan to avoid eviction, or harassment, or to see a dying child, according to a news release written by Sessions.

It was not uncommon for Urich to con as much as $1,000 from an individual victim, Sessions said.

"She always promised to return and give the trusting victims a gift for the kindness and generosity, such as her allegedly recently deceased husband's old car, motorcycle, gun collection, or something related to the type of shop the victim was running," Sessions wrote.

Sessions said she never returned.

A man who recognized Urich's photo in a seattletimes.com story on her arrest Wednesday e-mailed the newspaper describing a recent encounter with a woman be believes was Urich.

"Shirley Sue approached me for money in a parking lot in Redmond over the summer. She is very forceful and totally brazen, to say the least," the man wrote. "I called her on it, and watched her move her beat-up car to the next parking lot, and resume.

"I almost called the cops on her at the time," he wrote. "Wish I had now.

In 1999, police said Urich convinced a Redmond couple that her daughter had just been hit by a car and airlifted to a Texas hospital. They gave her $637. Earlier, she'd convinced a Sedro-Woolley businessman to give her $580 in cash to help her dying son, police said.

She was convicted of theft in Skagit County 10 years ago but took off before she was supposed to report to prison, police said.

As recently as March she was spotted in Auburn after attempting a scam, police said. She was alone and driving a 2000 Silver Volkswagen Beetle, which also was featured in the wanted fliers.

Her record includes 12 felony theft convictions and a 13-year stint in a Missouri prison. Urich has been convicted of theft dozens of times in Snohomish, King and Skagit counties alone, according to court records.

She is being held on $25,000 bail in the Snohomish County Jail.

Snohomish County Deputy Prosecutor Edirin Okoloko said Urich is slated for trial Dec. 1 and could face additional charges for bail-jumping and other crimes.

"I can see a pattern of crimes of dishonesty," Okoloko said.

Information from Times archives, reporter Jennifer Sullivan and news researcher David Turim is included.