Police Follow the Scent, Track Down Cookie Tampering Suspect

A Mrs. Fields Cookies store policy that links employees with batches of cookies they bake helped police Saturday track down a 20-year-old employee suspected of adding staples to a white chocolate cookie.

Michael Steven Connors of Anaheim, who had worked at the Mall of Orange store five weeks, was arrested at his home in connection with the incident and also on $2,700 of outstanding traffic warrants.

Connors became a suspect after a customer returned a cookie to the store about 6 p.m. Friday. Company officials ordered the store closed and employees turned over to police the remaining stock of 48 cookies and three trays of brownies, some of which had been sprinkled with staples. No injuries were reported and police called the case an isolated one. The store was open Saturday.

Debbi Fields, president and chief executive officer, said it was the first such incident in the cookie chain’s 12-year history. “I am shocked and concerned that this could happen,” Fields said in a written statement from the company’s headquarters in Utah. “I am especially pleased to know that the police found there has been no one injured.”

A spokesman for the company said store policy that requires employees to rotate from sales to baking positions at different times of the workday helped tie the suspect to a batch of cookies made between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Friday.

Orange Police Sgt. Ed Falkenstien said Connors could be charged with adding harmful substances to food, a felony. Police have not determined the motive behind the tampering.