Friends Reopen Laguna Beach Ice Cream Shop : Community: Customers pay up to $100 for a cone to help out merchants shot in Feb. 20 robbery. Police, meanwhile, work to publicize robber’s photo on nationwide TV.

In an outpouring of support for the victims of a botched robbery in which an owner of a Baskin-Robbins was killed and another was shot 12 days ago, volunteers reopened the ice cream store Friday and customers paid up to $100 for a cone.

“We had a man come in here and give me a $50 bill and walk out,” said Jan Jurcisin, office manager of the Chamber of Commerce, which organized the project to support the family.

While hundreds of people visited the store Friday, police were working to have the crime featured on the “America’s Most Wanted” television program.

“We’re most anxious to get the picture and the video that the press saw last Wednesday to their audience, which is 15 million (viewers),” Lt. Danell Adams said. “I think it would certainly help.”

Simindokht Roshdieh was shot to death Feb. 20 during the attempted robbery, and her husband, Firooz, seriously injured. Firooz Roshdieh was released from the hospital Tuesday and attended his wife’s funeral Thursday with 200 other mourners.

On Friday, volunteers pitched in to reopen the ice cream store at 247 Broadway.

When the doors were open at 11 a.m., a firefighter, police officer, local community activists and Baskin-Robbins employees were set to scoop. Mayor Kathleen Blackburn was ready to order--a single scoop of Boom Choco-Laka-Laka.

Charles Johnson, district manager for Baskin-Robbins USA, said it was the first time the company allowed volunteers to staff a store. With 90 volunteers signed up to work in shifts, Johnson said the community will likely help run the franchise through next weekend.

“This is definitely a corporation first,” he said. “When you have an outpouring of support like this, you’ve got to break the rules sometimes.”

Nick Roshdieh, the victim’s son, also was on hand to help and to thank volunteers.

“They’ve been great,” Nick Roshdieh said. “Hopefully, we don’t have to live through something like this again, the whole town.”

The coldness of the crime stunned this city, which had not had a robbery-homicide in at least 27 years.

Investigators, a number of whom stopped by for ice cream Friday, said they have no new leads in what they believe was a three-city crime spree.

Police believe that on the night of the slaying, a heavily tattooed man robbed Conroy’s Flowers at 2983 Harbor Blvd. in Costa Mesa at 8:40 p.m., continued to Blockbuster Music at 2280 Harbor and then went to a Baskin-Robbins in Tustin, where his image was captured by a surveillance video camera.

The gunman is described as a light-skinned Latino, 5 feet, 7 inches tall, 19 to 23 years old, with bushy eyebrows. He has a teardrop tattoo under his left eye and Old English-style tattoos along the sides and back of his neck, police said.

Police say they believe the suspect is the same man who robbed three Conroy’s Flowers shops in Redondo Beach--one on Jan. 24 and the other two on Feb. 7.

“We believe it’s the same suspect but we don’t know who he is,” Police Chief Neil J. Purcell Jr. said Friday. “We’re still following up leads as they come in.”

Police are hoping they can arrange to have the surveillance camera video of the suspect featured on “America’s Most Wanted” on March 18.

Tony Zanelotti, the show’s West Coast producer, said the crime could be included during a special taping of unsolved California crimes, but that he needed “the cooperation of the Police Department and the permission of the family.”

Officials said they will not know until Monday whether the crime will be featured on the program.

“We could show the videotape and possibly facilitate a capture,” Zanelotti said. “That’s our only reason for doing the story--to, hopefully, help the Laguna Beach people put out a bigger net.”