Valley businesses hit by rash of break-ins

WASILLA — Local business owners are on alert after a rash of break-ins in a relatively small area of the Mat-Su Borough.

Marie Congdon with Valley Storage said her facility was burglarized Aug. 25. The thieves struck her storage units, but not her home or her out buildings. The people who lost things in the break-ins were renters using the storage units.

“Only a couple of them actually lost stuff,” Congdon said. “Troopers came, fingerprinted for five hours.”

She said she started asking around and was able to come up with a half-dozen other businesses off the top of her head that had been hit. All of them fall between Trunk Road and Seward Meridian, most near the Palmer-Wasilla Highway, but some farther south.

Jackovich Industrial and Construction Supply Inc. is one of the ones farther south. Salesman Mike Russell said the business was actually hit twice.

“They broke one of the side windows and took 10 chainsaws,” he said. That was at the start of Labor Day weekend. The second break-in came toward the end of the weekend. “They came back after that and even used a screw gun to take the board off. They took the screws down and piled them up all nice and came back in.”

He said that time the thieves made off with four more chainsaws and a generator.

Russell said one of Jackovich’s customers actually came across a guy selling chainsaws out of the back of his truck on the Parks Highway on the way to Talkeetna. The customer bought one of the saws and Jackovich was able to confirm it was theirs. The customer passed the license plate number on to troopers.

Congdon’s inventory of stricken businesses includes a pair of coffee stands, a dance studio and a few others. The woman who answered the phone at The Mattress Ranch Monday said she couldn’t talk about the break-in there, deferring inquiries to her manager, who was out of town.

The area falls squarely within the jurisdiction of Alaska State Troopers. A perusal of a week’s worth of AST press released turned up no burglaries that could match any of Congdon’s descriptions. An email inquiry with a trooper spokeswoman was not returned as of press time.

Congdon said that in all cases the thieves seemed most interested in things that were easily transportable and easy to sell.

“It just alarms me and I want people to be vigilant. If nothing else, lock their cars, lock their doors,” she said.

She said she’s going to put some fencing around her storage units, but will make it as small a perimeter as possible so as not to impede wildlife too much. She’s looked into cameras, but hasn’t found any that seem to have enough resolution to be able to identify a thief caught on tape.

“Why spend $3,000 on cameras when you’re not going to get anything that’s going to help the police?” she asked.

She said she’s never had a break-in and has been in business since 1985. “I’ve never even locked my house or my outbuilding since I’ve lived there,” she said.

But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how to do her own investigation into a theft. About 10 years ago she had something stolen from her. She tracked the guy down and it turned out it was someone she knew. She wound up getting her stuff back. She said she understands troopers are busy and that property crimes are tough to solve.

“I know that there’s not much they can do in reality,” she said.

Spending all this time thinking about security, she said, is kind of disheartening.

“If that’s the future of our Valley I’m pretty darn sad about it,” she said.

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