Young Margita is a tricky thief. She pulls the purses from the pockets of passer-bys, steals baby carriages as well as cars. But after a failed coup the heat is on in her hometown Riga and so she decides to cross the border. She ends up in a sleepy village, whose odd inhabitants only read the papers to get worked up about crime stories from the big city.
Soon Margita makes the aquaintance of a little boy. He turns out to be just as clever a thief as she is. When the boy's single mother has to go to the hospital nothing stands in the way of common robberies by the unequal pair. But Margita has become notorious in the meantime. The papers publish her photo and she can be seen in the TV news. For her shelter she makes eyes at the young village policeman Arnold - successfully. And although Arnold knows from the start about Margita's past, he doesn't tell. His father meanwhile wonders why all of a sudden the crime pages are missing from his paper and why the TV doesn't work any more. But in spite of all the caution Margita's cover is broken up one day.