The Beanie Baby Bandit Toys With Our Collective Madness

I was working the day watch out of Chatsworth, trolling for column fodder, combing the newspapers that had come out during my vacation.

It had been an obscene two weeks in the San Fernando Valley. Darn, but I missed the Cal State Northridge pornography conference.

Then I saw something truly obscene. It was a headline over a story about a crime that could make even the most calloused police reporter shake his head in dismay.

Murder, alas, is something we understand. People kill each other all the time. Evil is as evil does. But this crime spoke of another sickness, a new pathology.

Gunman Robs Novelty Shop of $5,000--in Beanie Babies

I tasted bile as I read how, on Aug. 14, a masked man had walked into the Aahs gift shop on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, pointed a chrome semiautomatic pistol at a clerk and ordered her to the floor. Then he ordered other employees and customers to the floor as well.

He broke into a glass display case and carried off more than 40 Beanie Babies.

“He didn’t want the cash register,” a detective was quoted as saying. The bandit ignored wallets too. “All he wanted was the Beanie Babies. With the amount of money these are getting on the market, it was bound to happen sometime.”

I decided to work the phones. Maybe by now, there’d been a Beanie Baby Bandit bust. Or maybe the cops had some progress to report. But Det. Greg Demirjian said the robber’s trail was cold.

The masked gunman left no prints. Nobody got a good look at his car, assuming he used one. The hot Beanie Babies, the detective told me, “aren’t traceable at all. There are no serial numbers.” Their cute little names aren’t much help.

The fuzzy-wuzzy loot included Lefty the Donkey (valued at $325), Righty the Elephant ($320), Maple the Bear ($300) and Radar the Bat ($119). There is now a hot Tabasco the Bull ($275) and a contraband Tusk the Walrus ($119). He took six Flips the Cat, worth $50 each.

These prices were retail. Who knows what they’d command on the street? Only the crooks know where they are now.

Police are hoping that somebody who knows the Beanie Baby Bandit might harbor a grudge.

“Unless somebody dimes him off,” Demirjian said, “we won’t get him.”

One thing police know, Demirjian said, is that the Beanie Baby Bandit isn’t a run-of-the-mill robber. Most bandits want money for its own sake or to finance a drug habit. The fact that this one ignored the cash on the premises suggests a stranger motive.

“This is an isolated incident,” Demirjian said. It is also, he said, “the strangest” robbery he has encountered in 25 years of police work.

What would an FBI profiler make of this crime? I pondered the possibilities. Maybe the robber already had a fence lined up. Maybe he sells at Beanie Baby bazaars himself. Maybe he’s on a street corner in a long overcoat, saying “Pssst. You like Beanie Babies?”

None of this would have happened, of course, if not for the collectors who’ve created an obsession for the pouches of cloth that are filled with PVC pellets, not gemstones. People who are crazy enough to shell out hundreds and even thousands of dollars for toys that once retailed for $5.99 might be crazy enough to threaten lives and risk prison.

I went to the morgue--the newspaper morgue, now on computer. America, I learned, is a Beanie Baby battle zone. In Santa Ana, a man was arrested on suspicion that he attacked a couple with a metal pipe and stole 22 Beanie Babies worth an estimated $10,000. Elsewhere, people trafficking in counterfeit Beanie Babies have been arrested. A woman working a Beanie Baby scam on the Internet took $12,000 from collectors who coveted Chilly the Polar Bear.

Finally, I went to the scene of the crime. Clerks told me that they, fortunately, were not working the day of the robbery. Beanie Babies remain on copious display. Brittania the Bear could be mine for $595. Libearty--a bear--cost $395. Weenie the Dachshund retailed for $199.

Madness. Sheer madness.

Glenna Mathews was there with her 5-year-old granddaughter Kaylee, buying Beanie Baby accessories. (“Dragnet” changed names to protect the innocent, but not me.) A few years ago, Mathews told me, she bought a little stuffed spider for her youngest son. Recently Kaylee found it and identified it as a Beanie Baby. Alas, its tags were missing. If not, Web the Spider could fetch $1,300.

Meanwhile, millions of children go to bed hungry.

I talked to Serafina Lugo, an 18-year-old collector from Encino. Her collection started with a gift. Garcia the Bear probably cost $5 retail then, and now it’s worth more than $200. Lugo speculated that the Beanie Baby Bandit already had a fence lined up, maybe somebody who sells on the Internet. The young woman said she wasn’t surprised by the recent heist.

“I’ve heard of Beanie Baby riots.” Where? “Somewhere in the Valley.”

Burn, Beanie Baby, burn!

Joe Friday always got his man, every single “Dragnet.” I find myself now no closer to unlocking the Beanie Baby mystery than when I started. And if we find out the cause of Beanie Baby mania, perhaps we can come up with a cure.

Sure, they’re cute, but sheesh. Get a grip, people.

I left Aahs in haste, remembering that, in my eagerness to crack the Beanie Baby caper, I had neglected to feed the meter.

The Beanie Baby Bandit may be on the loose, but I got nailed.

My investigation cost me $30--and I don’t even have a Beanie Baby to show for it.

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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com. Please include a phone number.