San Francisco News Blog

Gotcha

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The debate on whether the Mission Bay thief who allegedly snagged three wallets from the China Basin Building (including one belonging to an SF Weekly employee) is incredibly crafty/ballsy or incredibly desperate/stupid has come to a close. He's apparently a dumbass, and as of two hours ago, the alleged thief is in police custody.

On Monday last week, a man showed up at our gargantuan office building; in professional attire, and stood out only because of his bright red sneakers and coke-bottle glasses. So when our employee returned from a trip to the kitchenette to find him sitting at her desk, she thought he might be new or lost. "Hi?" she said.

"Oh, hi!" he responded, then jumped out of the seat and fled the building. She noticed immediately that her bag had been tampered with and that her wallet was missing. When she called security, she learned that two other wallets had been stolen from a U.C. San Francisco office nearby, and that a suspect had been caught on camera. Although a building security chased the man down the street, he jumped onto Muni and escaped.

​In reflecting on these events, we gave the thief smart points for dressing business casual, but subtracted smart points for coming into a building where he should have known he'd be caught on camera. We gave him ballsy points for walking right into an office and sitting at the desk of an employee, but we considered him a moron for victimizing SF Weekly, where most of us are broke. 

So we were still on the fence about the smarts of this thief until today, when a UCSF employee who had her wallet stolen last week recognized the man she believed stole her wallet. He was hanging out in her office. Again. (Game over). She immediately called security, who alerted the UCSF police and followed the suspect on the cameras as he exited the building and headed toward Fourth and King streets.

That's where police were waiting to take him into custody. Two of the wallet snatcher's victims, including our employee, came out and identified him. The fact that he was wearing the same Buddy Holly-ish glasses certainly didn't work well for him.