Burglars damage, loot local businesses

WASILLA — It wasn’t her first break-in, but for Vickie Reese, owner of Northern Mist Gifts, the ones discovered Tuesday morning — at her shop and at at least four neighboring business — has her calling for stepped up police protection.

“I guess that’s the part that really upsets me the most,” Reese said, noting that a few officers at any one time are on duty to police all of Wasilla.

Most of the shops hit were in the Frontier Mall on the Parks Highway at Swanson Avenue. Outside the gift shop Tuesday, a vacuum cleaner stood among stray shards of broken glass from Northern Mist’s front door. The door to the neighboring Stampin Moose stamp shop was intact, but left ajar. Owner Denise Rexford said she couldn’t close it until she got someone over to fix it.

“We tried for 10 minutes to get that damn door open,” Rexford said about trying to get into her buisiness Tuesday morning.

The European Deli in another portion of the strip mall was also hit, they said, and thieves apparently tried and failed to break through one of the deli’s interior walls into the chiropractor’s office next door.

Greg Wood, deputy chief of the Wasilla Police Department, said the break-ins likely happened either Monday night or Tuesday morning. He added a couple of business that suffered break-ins that were likely related — the nearby Higher Grounds coffee shop and the Alaska Bike Center on Nelson Road. According to a Wasilla police press release, a window was broken on the bike shop and a pair of handlebars was stolen.

Shop owner Richard Clayton said he’s had numerous break-ins in the past two years.

“ You just get to the point where you feel like it’s ridiculous,” Clayton said. “If it continues for me, I’ll close down. I refuse to put bars over the windows.”

He has taken other security measures, though, including installing video cameras and an alarm system.

“ When your glass guy knows you by name like Norm off of ‘Cheers’ — ‘hey Richard!’ It’s not a good deal,” he said.

As to staffing levels, Wood said he’d rather not release definite figures for how many police are on duty at one time. He’s concerned that with definite numbers out there criminals would be able to count squad cars at headquarters to find out if they need to worry about running into a patrol unit.

“We have anywhere from two to four guys on a shift,” he said, sometimes more, depending on which investigators or ranking officers are working. “But we do identify trends and then try to respond to those trends in a pro-active sense. As a matter of fact I think this week you’re going to see some proactive patrols,” in the area near the strip mall.

Still, he said, it’s always good to have more eyes and ears out there and help from the public is always welcome.

“If it looks suspicious to them then it probably is and they should contact the Wasilla Police Department,” Wood said.

Clayton seconded Woods’ call for more eyes on the street. He attributed the break-ins to a lack of community in Wasilla, where folks seem less likely to report suspicious activity than they once were.

“ Last year I had my door kicked in at five in the morning,” a time when Nelson Road is usually very busy. “I think we’ve just gotten disconnected.”

Reese said that she’s still finding glass from their last break-in, which happened December 23 of last year.

Tuesday, she walked through the hallway behind her business, pointing out where thieves tried to pry open a lock box for a neighboring collections agency.

She pointed out the fogged, bulletproof glass on an exterior door, a replacement for the glass shattered in the December break-in.

On the ground just outside the door she spotted something.

“There’s a broken knife right there,” she said, pointing to a shiny half of a butter knife on the ground.

Though the thieves didn’t take much — a ninja sword set, body jewelry, knives, chains, two watch sets and a can of $1.99 lighter leashes — they likely doubled the loss to her business just by kicking in that glass door. Thankfully, if inexplicably, her computer, printer and other big-ticket business machines were left untouched.

“It’s tough enough to make ends meet but then on top of it to be robbed,” Reese said. “Mostly, it’s just frustration.”

Over at Stampin Moose, Rexford said she was lucky to have escaped much damage in the whole thing. Her computer was inside, she said, but the thieves apparently were unsuccessful in prying her door open.

“I think my laptop’s going to be starting to come home with me,” she said.

She thinks the thieves likely didn’t want to give her door the same treatment they gave Reese’s since a plate-glass door opening on to the parking lot offers views of her business from outside.

Still, she said, “It’s discouraging, it really is … People have to go to the point of hitting little businesses that carry Wasilla.”

Over at the chiropractor’s office, receptionist Nancy Breuer said she came in that morning to find there was “a breach in our wall in the back.”

Wood said it looks like the thieves abandoned their plans to get into the office.

“They tried to bust through the interior wall from the deli into the chiropractor’s office and it was a little bit more wall than they expected, I think,” he said.

Breuer said she was perplexed at first to think someone would choose to try and burglarize a chiropractor.

That is, until, “the officer pointed out that maybe they thought pain relief had something to do with medications.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.