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Published on 02/22/1999 All articles from this issue

Theft leaves Rancho merchant feeling vulnerable

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By Bruce Barton / Town Crier Staff Writer

Rose Hartman has a strong message in the wake of a Feb. 10 theft that left her at the mercy of scheming telephone crooks: "We have to come down hard on crime," she said last week. "One of the reasons they target Los Altos is - we have such an affluent image."

The owner of Hartman Fashions at Rancho Shopping Center was alone in the store when she got a call from someone identifying himself as Officer Sterling of the Sunnyvale Public Safety Department.

"He said he was at the Star One Credit Union and he had a suspect - he needed to identify that this person was my son." Hartman doesn't have a son.

Then a woman came on saying she had some of Hartman's credit cards and that someone had taken her wallet. The woman said she needed Hartman's PIN number (personal identification number) to confirm her identity. Hartman told the woman she didn't have her PIN number handy and to call her husband.

"The guy said he had my driver's license, and he'd get it back to me," Hartman said.

Around 5 p.m., Hartman phoned Sunnyvale public safety, only to be told there was no Officer Sterling. Then it hit her: "The only way to get that (credit information) was to have my purse and wallet," Hartman said. She went to her office in the back of the store, "and sure enough, my purse had been turned upside down, and my wallet was gone."

The PIN number her husband gave the mysterious callers was not hers, but his.

"In the meantime, I got a call from security police (that weekend) at the Sunnyvale Town Center saying they found my wallet in a garbage can," Hartman said. "This was a really bizarre situation."

Hartman, noting she is the only Rancho store with no male employees, said her store is especially vulnerable to crime. She noted a November 1997 robbery in which a man, armed with a semiautomatic weapon, took $43 in cash.

She said Rancho does not have roving security officers. She was sure her store was "cased" just prior to the theft. "They could have been sitting outside, calling from a cell phone," she said.

Dave Leary, treasurer of the Rancho Merchants Association and owner of Papa Murphy's Take 'N' Bake Pizza, said hiring guards would be cost prohibitive for the shopping center. He noted that crime does not occur very often at Rancho, as a whole.

But Hartman is not convinced. "Had he (the thief) not found what he wanted in the back room, he would have come through the front door," she said.

Noreen Sorg, a community service officer with the Los Altos Police Department in charge of crime prevention, noted two things Hartman and other merchants should do to help themselves: Lock up their valuables and their doors.

"Women have to be aware that their purses have to be secured," Sorg said. "It has to go in a locked place. Her back door was also unlocked. Also, when you have two doors, and you work alone, you need some kind of bell or sounding device."

She said such thefts are "not uncommon" to small businesses.

Sorg also recommended against keeping Social Security cards in wallets, as Hartman did. Fortunately for her, the thieves left the card in her wallet.

Hartman said the thieves managed to charge a few items onto her credit cards before she had them canceled. Sorg said suspects will often run cards through pumps at gas stations to check if the card has been stopped.

Sorg also noted some thieves will take checks from the back of the books, and the victims will rarely notice until it's too late.

Sorg said she offers crime prevention seminars to merchants but "they don't show up. It's frustrating. Until they've been a victim, they think it won't happen to them.

"Los Altos is such a beautiful city with a low crime rate, there's a kind of complacency that sets in," Sorg said.

Hartman said she has filed a report with the Los Altos Police Department.