Here’s a risky thing to do for a day’s pay: An employee of a Rainier Valley store followed a shoplifter to the sidewalk and was threatened with a knife, but he continued to follow the shoplifter anyway, according to a police report.

It began last Wednesday around dinnertime, when a man working for Stewart Lumber, which sells construction supplies and tools (as a side note, employees there actually know stuff about construction and are super helpful), spotted a man with duffel bag in the store. The man wasn’t attempting to buy anything, the duffel bag was full, and items the employee had just stocked on shelves were missing. When asked what was inside the bag, according to the employee’s statement in a police report, the man simply replied “Fuck off.”

The man left, but the employee tailed him down Rainier Avenue South for one block, until the man with the duffel bag turned around. The police records say that the suspect “pulled out a knife,” pointed it at the employee, and told him to “stop following him…. Though scared, [the employee] continued to follow (at a greater distance).” When police arrived, they arrested the suspect and found $500 in goods labeled exactly as described by the employee, later corroborated by security footage from the store, showing the man taking the goods from store shelves.

17 replies on “Clerk Risks Getting Knifed for $500 of Merchandise”

  1. I hate thieves. No one is entitled to someone else’s stuff regardless of how well-to-do the victim. And as a believer in a Karma-like system of universal justice, I believe that whatever is taken will be paid for tenfold some other way.

  2. I hope this fellow gets “employee of the month” or soemthing. My nephew was fired from hs job for not just handing over the money in a robbery attempt at the store where he worked. The theif left empty handed, but my nephew had not followed a company policy he had never been told.

  3. @2: I find that doubtful, unless it was a store without a company policy. Every retail or waitstaff position I worked at when I was younger made it VERY clear that when someone tried to rob or steal, you gave them the product. Nobody should be potentially murdered over $500.

  4. Its very common for employees to be fired for doing this. Had the employee been injured in trying to re-coup the stolen items, Stewart Lumber would have had to pay all the costs associated with his injury, which is often why most companies have this policy in place.

    While this is news that has a happy ending, SLOG interns really should end these stories with a warning not to attempt this. If not for your job, but for your life.

  5. I remember chasing a guy who ran out of Orpheum on Broadway with an armful of CDs all the way to Group Health on 15th. It wasn’t a high speed chase–more of an “OJ in the white van” sort of affair–but I wanted to let him know that I was not going to let him get away with that.

    After two blocks, he dropped two cds and said that’s all he took. After two more blocks, he turned and threw five more cds at me and said THAT was all he took. We spent the rest of the chase with him pleading for me just to let him go. When we got past 12th, he actually threw his KEYS at me.

    On 15th, I met up with a patrol car sent out to respond to the shoplifting call and let them take over (and despite having seen the guy just seconds earlier, the police never caught the guy…but, then again, we think we recovered all of the stolen product.)

    And, as far as I know, the guy’s keys were still waiting for him at Orpheum right up to the day it closed.

    (*Did I have sympathy for a guy who was probably stealing CDs to sell for cash for whatever he needed–food, shelter, drink, drugs? Yes, I did–I wasn’t after him because I was angry. I didn’t own the store. I didn’t get a reward for getting that product back. BUT, I didn’t want to work for a place that was an easy mark for thieves, either…and maybe having some crazy haired fat guy chase you for a mile might make him think there are better ways to be able to get the things he needed.)

  8. I don’t think the employee confronted the thief for the sake of earning his pay- he did it for the sake of his own dignity. Hard to put a price on that.

  13. Stinky @8 makes a good point. Opposing thieves and vandals at your where you work is not about protecting the Man’s property.

  16. I wonder if his employer has health insurance for employees? If no, it’s not worth the risk. For me, even if he does, I’m not risking my life for some trinkets.

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