Jewelry thief draws 2-year sentence

PALMER — A man who robbed Fred Meyer of a $5,500 gold watch he claimed to have traded for heroin received a two-year prison sentence Friday.

Jonathan Ashburn, 30, Wasilla, was charged Nov. 18 with robbery. According to documents filed in court at the time, he walked into Fred Meyer at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 12 and told the clerk at a jewelry counter he would shoot anyone who tried to stop him from walking away with the diamond-studded gold watch.

It was later determined Ashburn didn’t have a gun with him at the time. At his sentencing hearing, Ashburn was notably subdued.

“It’s embarrassing to have to be here, but it’s humbling and I’m just looking forward to the future,” he told Palmer Superior Court Judge Eric Smith.

Ashburn was actually in court to have two cases resolved. The other involved a $25,000 gold ring he’d stolen from a home off Rue De La Paix Loop not long after the Fred Meyer robbery.

He had already been arrested in that case when Wasilla police investigating the Fred Meyer holdup found him sitting in jail.

Prosecutor Alison Collins said that charge was reduced substantially for the sentencing hearing. It was one she said prosecutors didn’t feel had a strong chance of surviving at trial.

“That involves theft of a ring from an individual who we suspect was supplying drugs to the defendant,” Collins told Smith.

On the defense side, Ashburn’s two attorneys — one for each case — pointed out their client had made a remarkable transition since he had been sent to jail and forced to sober up.

“This is a case where the drugs had just gotten the better of him,” attorney Bruce Brown said. “We’re pretty positive about his prospects for rehabilitation.”

Ashburn essentially lost everything he had in a very short period of time, Brown noted. And his recovery isn’t over yet, which is why his client was hoping for a spot in a long-term residential drug addiction treatment facility in Anchorage or the Valley.

His other attorney, Greg Parvin, pointed out that Ashburn started using drugs before he turned 15.

He said his client’s main focus at sentencing was making his victims whole. He didn’t, as many defendants do, ask for an appraisal of the items he stole or dispute how much they were worth.

“Just tell me how much to pay so I can pay it,” Parvin said, describing his client’s attitude.

Smith, in agreeing to the sentence Collins, Brown and Parvin had hammered out, wished Ashburn the best in his attempts to pull himself out of addiction. For what it’s worth, he said, the person who helped Ashburn start living as a junkie has a tragic story of her own to tell.

“The person who you hooked up with, who sort of led you down the garden path, has been in this courtroom before,” Smith said.

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