Specialty Avenue’s Sisters Rock ‘n Gems owner Sue Bloomingdale said there’s not been much excitement around the store as far as crime is concerned at her downtown Prince George location other than a kleptomaniac grabbing some higher end items and teens filling their pockets with lots of little treasures.
But there is one grab and run incident that she recalls quite vividly.
“It was more than two years ago and a woman came in and grabbed the Humane Society coin collection can and she ran out,” Bloomingdale recalled. “So I phoned the non-emergency line of the RCMP and they already knew about her. Well, I wasn’t going to let her get away with it. I made a guess that I might find her at the needle exchange so I went over there and there she was. I told her ‘you’ve got something of mine and that money is to help the animals. I want that can back’. She had a suitcase and she threw it at me and ran down the middle of George Street. RCMP came and they gave chase, guns drawn but they didn’t find her as far as I saw.”
Bloomingdale imagined that she had done something else to warrant the guns-drawn police chase.
“I’m sure all that wasn’t just for stealing a can of change,” Bloomingdale said.
Nothing more came of it as far as she knew.
Then fast forward to last Friday (Oct. 13).
“So this same lady came into the store and said ‘do you remember me?’ and I said ‘yes, I remember you,” Bloomingdale said. “She said ’there was $47 in that can and so here’s $60.’”
That doesn’t happen every day, Bloomingdale observed.
“So now the Humane Society is getting $60,” Bloomingdale smiled as she hugged her rescue dog.
