She chased a fare cheat all the way to his home and collected the money from his mum.
This soft-spoken cabby even faced down a group of students, one of whom threatened to punch her after she prevented them from leaving without paying.
Said Madam Kwek Jin Tai, 46, in Mandarin: 'I cannot let these fare cheats get away thinking taxi drivers are easy to cheat.'
A cabby for 10 years, Madam Kwek, who now drives for Transcab, wants her colleagues to do the same so that together, they can send a message to fare cheats that they cannot take cabbies for a ride.
She is upset that despite tougher laws against fare cheats coming into force this month, many people are still trying to get free rides.
Last week, a man ran out of Madam Kwek's cab without paying the fare of $5.40.
He asked to stop at Teck Whye and before she knew, he jumped out of the cab and ran towards the forested area nearby.
She wanted to give chase but stopped after realising that it could be a ploy.
'It was midnight and quiet. So I decided not to risk it.'
She had better luck some time ago when she caught four schoolboys for not paying $10.
SUSPICIOUS
From the start, she found their behaviour suspicious as they asked her to turn left and right randomly, with no clear idea on where they wanted to alight.
When they finally told her to stop at a multi-storey carpark, they just ran off.
'I didn't think, I slammed the car doors shut and gave chase,' she said.
She was about 300m behind them when she saw them entering a lift. She saw the lift stopping on the 12th storey and took the next one up.
'They were shocked to see me, but they still did not want to pay the fare,' she said.
Then a resident walked past and Madam Kwek asked her to call the police.
The boys then panicked and ran into the lift. But Madam Kwek quickly put out her foot to stop the lift door from closing.
One of the boys then even wanted to punch her. But she stood her ground and refused to budge.
'I told him, 'You want to beat, you beat',' she said.
The boys surrendered at that point and took out money to pay her.
She said: 'They came up with $8, so I let them go. This was not about the money. If I had let them get away without paying, they would have thought cabbies are easy prey.'
Barely a week later, she met another cheat.
A man in his 30s, who smelt of alcohol, boarded her taxi and alighted at Yishun without paying.
'THROW MONEY'
'I got out and asked him for the fare, and he said he would ask someone to throw the money from upstairs. He started to look up and pretend to call for someone even though there was nobody around,' she said.
She later followed him to his unit on the eighth storey.
This article was first published in The New Paper on July 16th 2008
