I was assaulted and I got robbed while I was walking to the subway

[Ganoncrotch]

WagnerPaiva said:

I understand you can not pack heat in NY, but, how about a expandable baton?
I use it in my work and it can really put bad guys out of comission in 5 seconds.
You can get proeficient in it with very little training also.

From the OP  it was a shock fast attack, the only difference having something like this on hand might have done would have been after the fact drawn them back after the snatch to possibly cause more harm, while in the perfect world you can walk about with such a weapon ready to attack someone also... like I said, she has gone 22 years without such a thing happening, gripping a weapon in fear for the rest of your life just means that this one incident effects her for the rest of her life in a way that having this item on her person might not have changed anything only for the worse possibly.