The bank robber is described to the San Diego cops as "fairly tall and thin as a rail." Cops are told the bandit wore a tam o’shanter cap, argyle socks and checkered knickers with a button-up vest sweater.

"He had to be at least seventy years old -- probably older -- he looked like a fugitive from a retirement home or a clown from a golf course," a bank employee says to the cops. "I thought he had a bomb in the cloth bag he was carrying over his shoulder," says a teller.

Bank officials refuse to disclose the amount of money taken in the bank heist, but one of the bank’s employees tells a news reporter, "off the record," that the old guy got away with "at least six figures."”

Detectives are still trying to figure out what the bank robber used for a hold-up weapon. Nobody saw any firearms, but all of the bank’s employees were "scared to death of the guy because he kept touching that black bag hanging over one shoulder." All of the employees agree, "We think he had a bomb in that bag."

Finally, when police view the bank’s video tapes of the robbery they realize the black bag everybody was afraid of was really nothing more than a carrier for an oxygen tank.

"The proof of that was the plastic tube stuck in the guy’s nose," a detective says. "Nobody noticed the tube until we saw it in the close-ups on video. The old guy was on oxygen."

Detectives plan to canvass retirement homes with photos scanned from the video tape. "If we describe him as wearing a tam and argyle socks we’ll have the guy in custody within 24 hours," says one cop.