Mother Accused of Sending Son to Steal From Store

A transient was arrested on suspicion of burglary after she allegedly sent her 12-year-old son into a Sears store in Thousand Oaks with instructions to steal $75 worth of merchandise so she could return it and use the money to get them a hotel room and some food.

Caren Helen Jeffries, 32, ended her instructions to her son by telling him to be careful and waited for him in a car parked outside the store located in the Janss Mall, authorities said.

Chased by store security, the boy ran back to his mother’s car carrying a $48 women’s bathing suit and a $24.99 pair of boys pants, said Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Bruce Watlington. The boy was taken back into the store for questioning while his mother waited for him, Watlington said.

“He initially told me that he had taken the items for presents,” Watlington said. “He was a very streetwise 12-year-old. He said the pants were for a friend of his at school and that the bathing suit was for the friend’s mother.”

Watlington left the boy alone for about 10 minutes in a security room at the store and, when he returned, the teary-eyed child was ready to confess.

“He said they had done this before in Ventura and that this is something they do whenever they need money. He said they didn’t have any money,” Watlington said.

Jeffries, who told Watlington that her son was lying, was arrested on suspicion of burglary shortly after the incident at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday and taken to Ventura County Jail, where she was being held in lieu of $10,000 bail, Watlington said.

Watlington said the woman was already on probation for other crimes that he would not specify. Her vehicle was searched, and although no other stolen objects were found, she was arrested.

“We interviewed her regarding what her little boy had said,” Watlington said. “She said he was lying and that she didn’t know why he makes these things up.”

The youth and a 6-year-old sister, who was with her mother in the vehicle, were turned over to the county’s Public Social Services Agency and put into temporary foster care. A woman who was also at the scene and described herself as a friend of Jeffries was interviewed at the scene and released.

Sally Allen, a social services program manager, said that the agency is barred by law from discussing its cases and that she could not even acknowledge whether it had placed Jeffries’ children.

She did say that children in similar circumstances are immediately placed into foster care while the agency determines a suitable, long-term option. That review includes an assessment of the parent’s fitness, she said.

“We’d be looking at the mother’s situation, to see what brought this about,” Allen said. “Are the allegations true? What’s going to happen to her? Is she going to be facing criminal charges?”

Watlington, a parent himself, said interrogating the youngster was not easy. “It’s a tragedy that a parent would use their children in this manner,” he said. “It just rips your heart out.”