Coffee stand burglar caught on video

MAT-SU — Soon after her coffee stand, Cozy Cup, was broken into, Stephanie Moffitt posted a photo of the perpetrator to Facebook.

“It’s not a revenge tactic for me,” she said. “I want these kids to get caught so they don’t start out on a life of crime.”

Moffitt said she’s had the coffee stand on Old Trunk Road across from Three Bears since January, and this was her first break-in. The previous owners, she said, also were hit once.

“They kicked the door in, broke a couple of cameras, trashed my monitor and stole a bunch of Red Bulls,” she said.

Since the break-in, Moffitt has redoubled her security efforts. The damage, she said, wasn’t that extensive and took probably 20 minutes to clean up. The real harm was how scared it left her employees.

She said Alaska State Troopers have told her putting the photo on Facebook seems to have helped the investigation.

Troopers report the rash of coffee-stand break-ins began Dec. 1 and hit four or five stands between then and Dec. 3. They stretched across a wide swath of the Valley, from Big Lake to Palmer.

Doors were kicked in or windows busted out. But the coffee stands don’t generally keep money inside. Still, the break-ins weren’t cheap and the damage was expensive to fix —troopers estimate about $10,000.

As of Friday, AST spokeswoman Megan Peters couldn’t say if there had been new break-ins. She said troopers are still investigating.

“No one has been charged yet,” she said in an email late Friday morning.

Checks with the Wasilla Police Department turned up one other commercial burglary that could be definitively identified as a coffee stand. In that case, WPD responded to the Metro Café at 6:37 a.m., Dec. 3. Police found damage to the drive-through window, but nothing was stolen.

In Palmer, no break-ins have been reported.

“Once we heard about them occurring we put extra patrol on the coffee stands and spoke to the owners so they could be more vigilant. So far, so good,” Cmdr. Lance Ketterling with the Palmer Police Department wrote in an email.

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