Left behind
CONIFER — After spending a productive hour at her local grocery, Charlene Shopper trundled her top-heavy shopping cart out to the parking lot and transferred all of its contents into her car except her purse. After spending a less-productive half-hour sitting in her packed and parked vehicle “texting,” Charlene realized the omission and thought to recover the purse, but discovered the cart and carry-all had been pre-retrieved. Quickly ascertaining that the missing tote hadn’t been turned in at the customer service counter, she enlisted store personnel in a thorough sweep of site and searchers were able to locate her shopping cart in short order. As it happened, all of Charlene’s belongings were — with one notable exception — still in it. It seems that somebody transferred the entire contents of her clutch to a plastic shopping bag and pinched the purse. After satisfying herself that – with one notable exception – all of her belongings were present and accounted for, Charlene called JCSO to report a handbag heist.
Flag under fire
CONIFER — On a routine grocery-shopping mission, the disabled veteran parked in a handicapped spot on the evening of Aug. 2 and proceeded into the store. By the time he proceeded out again, somebody had slashed the left-front tire of his Ford F-150. He was busy trying to repair the damage when a store manager approached with enemy intelligence. “Some kids” had been observed “standing around the truck” and were considered likely suspects. The veteran was still digesting that information when a stranger approached to say he’d noted suspicious doings in the pickup truck’s immediate vicinity and had “scared the kids off.” Yet a third customer came forward at about that time to say she’d caught the entire incident on cell phone video and would forward it to JCSO at first opportunity. Deputies were unable to locate the young saboteurs anywhere within the commercial complex, but hope to find them later on film. As to motive, the veteran suspects he was targeted because of his “handicap plates” and “American flag on the back of my truck.”
Meadow a la mowed
EVERGREEN — Driving by her mom’s house on the morning of July 31, she observed that the property “appeared fine.” Driving by her mom’s house later that afternoon, she was enraged to see that “someone mowed the meadow” behind it. She immediately began canvassing the block, grilling neighbors to find out if anyone had seen a psycho with a scythe perfidiously pruning her mom’s private prairie. Nobody had, so she called JCSO, telling deputies that if they could identify the illicit landscaper her mom would “want to pursue charges.”
Mr. Wilson strikes back
EVERGREEN — The problem isn’t so much the trail that runs behind his house, the harried homeowner explained to deputies, it’s all the dad-blasted kids on it. According to Harried’s scowling statement, the path is simply lousy with young ragamuffins who generally raise a racket, holler like wild animals, and one time even “pounded” on one of his walls. A couple of days earlier he thought he heard gravel strike his house, and although he didn’t see any of the irksome urchins lurking about he felt sure their dirty little hands did the deed. Since his list of suspects is as vague as it is vast, officers agreed to perform extra patrols of the neighborhood until the problems stop or go away to college.