The Fight Against Crime: Notes from the Front : To Thieves, Everything’s a Real Steal

Thieves will steal anything.

It doesn’t matter what the value is; as long as it can be sold or traded or even kept, they will take it. Whether it is a simple house plant or an exotic boa constrictor, to someone it is worth pilfering.

A man who lived in a rural community south of Palmdale discovered a prized gorilla costume stolen from a shed outside his mobile home. He kept props and costumes from his job at a movie studio in the shed and thought it was safe with a small lock on the door.

The burglar, who lived a mile away, broke into the shed and stole the $1,000 costume complete with realistic ape mask, recalled Sgt. Richard Wood of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

The suit was recovered and returned to the owner, but what the thief wanted with a gorilla costume is still a mystery, Wood said.

“If it isn’t nailed down, people will steal it,” Wood said. He should know, he heads a burglary detail at the Antelope Valley Sheriff’s Station.

“People take things because they are there to be taken.”

“We have had a guy rip off a big satellite dish from a neighbor’s back yard and install it at his own house,” Wood said.

Even a houseplant can entice a thief. In Studio City, a woman ran into the street and flagged down a patrol car to report a stolen fern.

“She had just watered it and set it on the porch,” recalled Officer David Wright of the LAPD’s North Hollywood Division.

“It was a little unusual and I asked her if she wanted to make a report and she said yes.”

The $15 plant was never recovered. “Maybe if I had been there a few minutes earlier, I could have stopped the crime in progress,” Wright added.

Then there are the unusual--and expensive--heists.

A few weeks ago, 3,000 pounds of aluminum was stolen from a Valencia airplane manufacturer and found later at a local scrap yard. The burglar stole $2.8 million worth of small aluminum pieces of tooling used to build frames of cargo planes, sheriff’s investigators said.

But the burglars didn’t shop around when they rid themselves of their booty. Investigators estimated the scrap dealer paid 92 cents a pound--the salvage value--for the pieces. As tooling, the metal pieces are worth about 1,000 times that amount, deputies said.

While a Sherman Oaks couple was away on a monthlong cruise, their houseful of furniture was stolen while neighbors looked on early this year. Brazen thieves took almost every piece of furniture from their home in the middle of the day, “but none of the neighbors questioned them, they just assumed the family was moving,” said Sgt. Joseph Brazas of the LAPD’S Van Nuys Division.

“When these people came home, their entire house was cleaned out,” Brazas said.

Two of the burglars were well on their way from the heist when police stopped their van for a traffic violation near Sepulveda and Ventura boulevards, Brazas said. It wasn’t until the officers noticed an expensive grand piano amid the couches, tables, chairs, lamps and kitchen appliances in the back of the vehicle that their suspicions were roused. When the driver could give no address as a source of the furniture, the officers took a closer look.

“The officer liked pianos and looked into this beautiful piano,” said Brazas. “There was this little card from a (piano) tuner still inside.”

The tuner was called and gave the name and address of the owner. When police found the house empty, the driver and his accomplice were arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen goods, Brazas said.

Another unusual caper was the theft of a boa constrictor from a Saugus pet store earlier this year.

After browsing through the store, a couple asked to hold the 5-foot brown snake. After a while, they put the snake back into the cage and left the store.

But soon the woman came back and while she diverted the clerk’s attention, the man took the snake, said Sgt. Rick Doan of the Santa Clarita Sheriff’s Station.

“When the woman finally left, the clerk walked past the cage and nothing was in it,” said Doan.

“That was one of the strangest ones.”