A California sandwich shop employee is being hailed as a hero after saving a mother and her toddler as they were being robbed.

Last Friday, Victoria FitzGerald was pushing her 3-year-old son in a stroller to Ike’s Love & Sandwich Shop when a man approached her and asked for directions to a nearby grocery store. As she pointed the way to him, he grabbed her purse from the bottom of the stroller and started to run.

“I grabbed my purse, but then he raced to pull it away from me and we were both pulling on it and I just thought, I don’t have the strength, he is going to get my purse,” Victoria said. “Then I stuck my foot in the loop of my purse … and I started screaming for help, and that’s when the man ran away and Julian came out of Ike’s and went running after him.”

Julian Surall had been working inside the shop when he heard the commotion, and he immediately went out to help the mother.

“The lady was with her kid; that is the thing that really caught me by surprise,” he said. “Broad daylight and she was with her child … so disrespectful.”

Julian started running in the direction that the suspect went, and he eventually caught him. He managed to corner him in a bathroom and wrestle him to the ground, holding him there until police arrived.

“The key is to hold somebody’s wrist and they can’t really move,” Julian explained.

Victoria was incredibly grateful to Julian for what he did. “I said to him, ‘You’re a hero,’ and he said, ‘Nah,’” Victoria said, adding that she gave him a hug.

“Most people would not help,” she continued. “He’s so young. That’s what really shocked me.”

Though he has been hailed as a hero, Julian does not see himself that way.

“I’ve always been like that,” he said. “That’s the way our parents raised us … If you can help somebody, you do that.”