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Thursday, October 25, 2007

Thrift Store Hit by Burglars

By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
    The Talking Talons Thrift Store in Cedar Crest was burglarized last week.
    The break-in happened sometime between 6 and 7:30 a.m. Oct. 17, according to Talking Talons' development director and thrift store manager Angie DiSalvo.
    A double-pane window looking into the thrift store's office was broken with a cinder block, according to DiSalvo.
    "It had to be a pretty strong person to chuck a cinder block," DiSalvo said.
    The burglar or burglars entered the office and took a deposit bag that had been left there, making off with just under $585, according to DiSalvo.
    The store, north of Interstate 40 on N.M. 14, sells donated items, many of them for under a dollar, DiSalvo said.
    "That's a lot of items ... that's a banner day," she said, referring to the day the store's cash was stolen. "It looks like whoever did this knew what we do on a daily basis."
    The revenue from the thrift store is used to help support the animals cared for by Talking Talons Youth Leadership and also fund youth programs.
    "(The burglars) took money directly out of programs for kids," DiSalvo said. "(The burglary) is strange and it's bad karma ... if you rob a charity, the same as if you rob a church, you're going down."
    After the burglary was reported in television news stories, she said the store recovered the losses.
    "Once people saw it on the news they just did some wonderful, wonderful, wonderful things," she said.
    DiSalvo said donations came in from organizations as diverse as a Boy Scout troop and a motorcycle club. After the groundswell of donations, she said, the store even recovered the cost of replacing the broken window.
    "I'm really just beyond blown away with the response from the community," she said.
    When DiSalvo went to area businesses to inform them of what had happened, she found that two other businesses were also burglarized within the last few months.
    Bruce Ogle— owner of the Lazy Lizard Grill on N.M. 14 near the Sandia Crest Highway in Cedar Crest— said his safe was taken from the store in May. He said the loss was substantial but preferred not to give a dollar amount.
    Alisa Young's restaurant was hit in August. She and her husband, Jamie, are co-owners of Sandia Crust Pizza Company in Cedar Crest.
    "They just took the cash. They didn't take anything else, they didn't even take a Coke," Alisa Young said. She also didn't wish to disclose the amount of money that was taken.
    Her husband added that the burglary was also done after a busy night, when the couple had taken a rare night off to go to Albuquerque.
    Like the owner of the Lazy Lizard Grill, the Youngs said they took steps to secure their business from future burglaries. Both businesses had never been robbed before, according to their owners.