The State - News from Feb. 1, 1985

Police in two San Francisco Peninsula communities are not chuckling at a string of 27 dental office burglaries in which thugs have made off with gold, cash and tanks of “laughing gas.” Officers said $10,500 in cash and gold has been taken in 17 break-ins in Sunnyvale, with $7,000 more lost in 10 burglaries in Menlo Park. Gold for fillings was taken from 13 Sunnyvale offices and nitrous oxide, the relaxant and pain reliever commonly called laughing gas, was taken from three offices, detectives said. “It seems that the person who ripped us off had to have known something about dentistry, or he had to know something about the lab business,” one of the victims, Dr. Ken Dwiggins, said. “It’s easy to get top dollar” for the stolen items, Dwiggins said.