An elegant 84-year-old woman with a passion for fine jewelry went looking for a bit of bling in downtown San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon.

She was no idle browser. She was Doris Payne, so notorious an international jewel thief that she was the subject of a 2013 documentary film. Born in West Virginia, she started stealing in her 20s and has continued for 60 years, not only across the U.S. but in Greece, France, Britain and Switzerland.

Payne has been said to have a 20-page rap sheet, a 40-year-old Interpol report, five Social Security numbers and nine dates of birth. Halle Berry was once floated as the possible star of a Hollywood movie about her life.

Last spring, Payne was convicted in Southern California of stealing a $22,500 ring from a Palm Desert jewelry store. She was released from jail in October, and has apparently made her way north.

She was busted Monday for allegedly trespassing into a San Francisco department store, then released early Tuesday. That’s when Gigi Gruber spotted her.

“Are you Doris Payne?” asked Gruber, a jewelry maker who had been warned a few days before that Payne was in the Bay Area.

Gruber, who operates her business inside Manika, a Market Street jewelry shop, had recognized the well-dressed, white-haired woman making inquiries about gold necklaces.

Winks before leaving

“No,” replied the woman, who was on her way out of the store when Gruber approached.

Peering closer, Gruber was sure. “Yes, you are,” she insisted. At that point, she said, Payne “gave me a cute little wink and went on her way.”

Payne was the subject of the 2013 documentary “The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne.” The filmmakers — who paid for their subject’s participation, Variety said — described Payne on the movie’s website as “a rebel who defies society’s prejudices” in order to live “her own version of the American Dream.”

“Doris is fearless,” filmmaker Matthew Pond told NPR in an interview in November. “And I think that’s a double-edged sword for her. You know, it gives her the ability to go into Cartier and steal a 10-carat diamond. She’s also aware of what it’s like to be in jail. And she’s not afraid of it.”

“There’s never been a day that I went to steal that I did not get what I went to do,” she said in the documentary.

“She’s almost legendary,” said Manika owner Peter Walsh, who had waited on Payne when she came into his shop. “It has a kind of Jesse James feel to it.”

Store owners warned

Payne is currently on a form of probation. She pleaded guilty to burglary and grand theft of the ring in April, and was sentenced to four years — two behind bars and two under supervision, during which time she was ordered to stay away from jewelry stores.

Riverside County released her in July because of overcrowding. But because she’d previously been on probation for felony theft in Los Angeles, she was shipped to that county.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department freed her a few days later. When she failed to report to probation authorities, she was arrested again in September. After persuading a judge she’d been confused about the requirement to report, she was released for good — mostly — in early October.

A few weeks ago, friends in the jewelry biz sent pictures of Payne to Gruber, with a warning that she was in the Bay Area.

Why Payne came to San Francisco remains unclear. Her lawyer was unavailable for comment.

On Monday, she was arrested in “a department store on the 300 block of Post Street,” according to a San Francisco police report, and she was cited for trespassing.

Police checked and discovered she was the subject of a warrant. They handed her over to the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, which runs the local jail, at 1 a.m. Tuesday.

She went to court that morning, and got the warrant — which turned out to be 33 years old — dismissed. By 10:30 a.m., she was released, early enough in the day for her to be downtown by lunchtime for Union Square bauble browsing.

Wary shopkeeper

In the early afternoon a woman wearing light-colored clothing, a short trench coat and hair pulled back — and “nice loafers,” said Gruber — came into Manika and asked Walsh if he had any 18-karat gold chains.

“She wasn’t exactly looking in the cases,” said Walsh.

The times he’s “gotten burned,” as Walsh put it, thieves had merchandise in their hands, or they asked to see more than one thing at a time. Instead of removing merchandise from the cases to show Payne, he asked more specifically what she wanted.

“When I followed up with questions and didn’t go to a case, she clearly knew that I wasn’t going to hand anything to her,” said Walsh.

He suggested she might find something at Gump’s, and she left quickly.

Leah Garchik is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @leahgarchik