Bank Fights Back After 4th Robbery of Year : Crime: Wells Fargo employees in Ventura were emotionally scarred by an armed takeover July 1. The branch responds with beefed-up security.

No one can say for sure why some Ventura County banks present a more tempting target for desperadoes than others.

But they do.

So far this year, five banks hold the dubious distinction of being the county’s most-robbed financial institutions, according to FBI records. Household Bank of Port Hueneme has been robbed five times. Four others have been hit four times.

But only one of the five--the Wells Fargo branch at Chestnut and Santa Clara streets in downtown Ventura--was the target of an armed robbery in which bandits actually took over the bank.

At the other four, notes were passed to tellers demanding cash. Officials at these banks said that although they continually review security, they do not anticipate taking dramatic new steps to thwart robbers.

Not so at the Wells Fargo bank, where some employees were so shaken by the July 1 robbery that they are still consulting a bank therapist.

One bank official said a 9mm handgun held by one suspect “was about six to eight inches from my face. He told me to get down. I was told I screamed, but I don’t remember that.”

This month’s heist, after robberies in April, May and June, was the last straw for angry Wells Fargo officials. They decided to fight back.

The first retaliatory step was to lock the front door of the stucco-and-tile building.

“It will never be opened again,” said Robert L. Skaar, 36, who took over as the branch manager 15 months ago.

The theory, he said, is to make it more difficult for would-be robbers to escape. Now, suspects would have to dash through the rear glass doors facing a parking lot that abuts Chestnut Street.

Hopefully, he said, customer traffic there could slow them down and complicate any getaway attempt.

Another defensive weapon, Skaar said, is the imminent construction of a “bandit barrier” inside the bank--a bulletproof glass shield designed to protect employees that will stretch from the teller counters to the ceiling. Price tag: $50,000.

“That’s a shame we have to have that,” Skaar reflected. To a large degree, the symbolism of the barrier runs counter to the casual, friendly atmosphere that attracts customers to the branch.

“But it is a necessity,” he said.

In addition, the bank’s first security guard was hired the day after the July 1 robbery.

The uniformed guard, Donald Provencio, 20, of Ventura, carries a Taser weapon and handcuffs--but not a handgun. His mission is to observe the bank’s parking lot and back doors in an effort to intimidate would-be thieves and generate confidence among customers.

“We’re trained to keep an eye out, not to jump someone with a gun,” he said.

About once a day, Ventura police drive through the parking lot.

“We really appreciate that,” Skaar said.

All of these defensive measures add up to “a kind of silent combat to assure customers it’s safe to bank here,” he said.

Signs of the stressful times bank employees live in are the wanted posters on the Ventura branch’s front and back doors.

The posters offer a $50,000 reward for a robber who terrorized a Wells Fargo employee and his family last April in the San Fernando Valley.

Kathleen Shilkret, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said the bank has decided to go all out to thwart robberies, and that high-profile wanted posters are part of the strategy.

“It’s the first time a California bank went out and made a big splash about it,” she said.

Still, bank robberies continue at an alarming rate. And the one at the Wells Fargo branch in Ventura this month left employees traumatized.

A team that included a counselor was immediately dispatched to the bank to counter stress symptoms resulting from the takeover robbery.

Such robberies, where gun-wielding bandits often order employees and customers to the floor, are rare in Ventura County, say police officials and the FBI.

This stands in dramatic contrast to Los Angeles County, where there were 157 takeover robberies of financial institutions during the first six months of this year, a 300% increase over the same period a year earlier, FBI spokesman John Hoos said.

During a takeover robbery, Hoos said: “These guys just go berserk in the bank. They steal personal property. They threaten the people they rob.”

They can also leave employees with emotional scars.

“It was my first one,” said Skaar, who previously was a banking officer at a Wells Fargo branch in Pasadena. “I was in a conference room when I heard screaming and yelling. The first thing I thought it was, was a customer complaining.”

When he saw what was happening--with tellers and about 15 customers on the floor--”I was really scared,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Oh God, just let these guys go. I’d never seen a drawn gun before.

“Even now, when I’m talking about it, it’s flashing at me.”

A few days after the robbery, Skaar said, he was sitting in the same conference room when he heard a loud noise from the banking floor. It turned out to be nothing, but it immediately caught his attention.

“I panicked for a minute and then came to my senses,” he said. “If I’m feeling that way, I guess everyone is feeling pretty much the same.”

Or maybe worse.

One bank executive who had been forced to lie on the floor said that her hands were shaking so badly after the robbery that “it took me four different times to dial 911.”

“I’m 49, and for the first time in my life I feel fear, and I don’t like living in fear,” she said.

A young teller declared in an interview that as soon as one of the robbers yelled, “Get down!” she practically self-destructed.

“I thought we were all going to die,” she said.

Even now, she said, she has nightmares and sleeps fitfully.

“I dream about old friends I haven’t seen in a long time dying in car accidents,” she said.

A counselor told her that her reaction was not unusual and that the nightmares were “a symbolic reaction to what happened,” she said.

The teller said she was standing at her station with a direct view of the three as they entered the bank’s front door about 10:35 a.m. July 1. She recalled that one of the suspects waved a loaded 9mm handgun and loudly ordered employees and customers to drop to the floor. Another suspect leaped the tellers’ counter and swiftly moved from drawer to drawer, scooping about $20,000 into a cloth bag while employees and customers remained frozen on the floor.

“I freaked out,” said one bank official. She said she was talking with a customer at her desk when the gun-waving robber yelled for everyone to lie down. Both the official and the customer dived under her desk. “I was petrified,” she said.

A couple of minutes later, the bandits were fleeing in a red van down the freeway. An eyewitness tip and quick action by the Ventura Police Department resulted in the capture of three suspects in a residential neighborhood in Oxnard.

Skaar said he and his employees followed the bank’s drill for such a crisis. No effort was made to confront the robbers. After they fled, he locked the bank’s doors and made sure that everyone--employees and customers--was OK.

“I think they handled it well,” said Ventura Police Sgt. Roger Nustad, who supervises major investigations. “They did what they were ordered to do. You don’t want to set robbers off to inflict injuries.”

Now, once again, it’s business as usual.

Smiling tellers are at their stations. A quiet ambience has again settled over the bank’s daily routine.

What isn’t obvious is that nerves are still taut.

“Now you watch everything,” one employee said. “If someone comes in who looks suspicious, your eyes are glued on him.

“They try to prepare us for robberies. But, emotionally, they can’t prepare you for it.”