VIDEO: Store owner with club bashes knife-wielding robber

BROCKTON, MA (KTRK) -- A Massachusetts woman fought off a would-be robber with a long wooden club at a Brockton market.

The robber walked into Celina's Market and demanded money, slashing a knife in the air.

That's when, as WCVB reports, the owner Maria Alves reached for the two-feet-long club she stashes under her counter and smacked the robber. The beating apparently scared him away.

Watch it all go down in the surveillance video posted above.

Alves says in the eight years she's owned the grocery she's learned to be prepared.

She said, "It gives me anxiety - I went home, got no sleepl. I wake up and pray, and ask God to help me."

Alves says her heart still races watching that surveillance video, and along with her own life, she feels she was defending a precious memory, WCVB reports.

"I opened this store in my daughter's name who passed away 13 years ago," Alves said. "I opened this place so I can hear 'Celina' a thousand times a day."