Police Suspect $1-Million Jewel Heist Was Setup : Santa Monica: Police think the thieves tailed the victim from downtown, then punctured her car tire during a lunch stop. Her briefcase was taken from the trunk while the flat was fixed.

It was a very costly flat tire.

A jewelry saleswoman changing a flat at a Santa Monica Taco Bell restaurant found that her briefcase was stolen from the open trunk of her car while she was looking the other way.

The victim, identified as Yong Kyu Kim of Los Angeles, told police the black leather briefcase contained jewelry worth more than $1 million at wholesale prices.

Police said they believe the heist was a setup--the work of an organized group of bandits that probably followed Kim from the Los Angeles Jewelry Mart downtown to the fast-food restaurant at 2021 Lincoln Blvd., and then punctured her tire so she would have to open the trunk when she went to fix it.

Sgt. Tim Bauer, a robbery investigations expert with the Santa Monica Police Department, described the heist as the largest robbery in recent memory in the seaside city.

“These guys knew exactly what they were doing,” said Sgt. Bill Brucker, a Santa Monica police spokesman. “I’m sure she was well-targeted by them.”

Kim, 43, a self-employed Korean national, told police that she had left the Jewelry Mart and stopped at the Taco Bell about 2 p.m. Saturday. As she ate her lunch in the car, a 1982 Cadillac Seville, Kim said she noticed that her right front tire was low.

A passerby who saw that Kim’s tire was flat began helping her fix it. While they were busy, a “well-groomed” Latino man dressed in a gray suit apparently took Kim’s briefcase from the trunk and walked along Lincoln Boulevard until he met up with a female and another male in a red compact car, according to a police report.

Kim told police that an inventory of the items was in the briefcase, making it hard for her to reconstruct what was stolen. Reached at her home near Koreatown, Kim would not comment on the case, saying only, “I don’t feel good.”

Police described Kim as being distraught over the incident. They plan to again interview her, as well as the man who stopped to help her. Bauer said police are trying to determine what was in the briefcase, how much it was worth and whether Kim had insurance to cover the losses.

Police have no suspects in the case, but believe organized criminals were probably at work.

“There’s a limited market for this stuff,” Bauer said. “This is not like stealing car radios.”

Bauer said organized thievery is a continual problem in the jewelry industry, and that several substantial thefts occur each year just in Santa Monica. Many times, the bandits follow jewelry dealers and couriers around the jewelry district in downtown Los Angeles, or to and from gem shows, such as one at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium each year. This year’s jewelry show ended April 7.

In April, 1990, bandits made off with about $474,000 in jewelry during two unrelated robberies in Santa Monica. In one case, robbers broke into a dealer’s car and stole jewels valued at $420,000, and two other jewelers who had just left the gem show were robbed of $54,000 while sitting in their car. Even though Bauer said he went to gem trade shows as far away as Orange County looking for the missing jewels, they were never recovered and the thieves never caught, he said this week.