Below represents views and thoughts of mine concerning this chapter in my life involving the parents living in wealth and privilege and how they can teach their children to grow up without boundries, honesty and disrespect for other peoples property. I start my dialog with Lucky stores Loss and Prevention Manager Bob McConnel and his role in this entire matter.  Oh, I added a few of my silly animations below...what good is this page if I don't have some interesting animations?

My dad spent his career making sure that he never did anything that could damage his integrity or his credibility and this made it possible for my dad to be the most efficient retail detective that ever lived.  In other words,  he never did anything that could damage his reputation and one way or another.  He also knew that accepting payola would destroy his career faster than anything else. 

I know the feeling in a small way too.  When I was in charge of the frozen food department, I would have sales representatives from different companies occasionally offer me money if I ordered extra of the food items that they represented.  This is considered accepting gratuities and could be considered accepting payola. I would always tell this person that I couldn't do that.  I would never allow this kind of monetary dishonesty to govern my morals and my integrity. When you give in to those kinds of temptations then you have also opened yourself up to just about any kind of dishonesty.

When Lucky Stores Loss and Prevention Manager Bob McConnel came to the store where I caught Demetri Pappadopoulos stealing, with the private investigator hired by the Pappadopoulos family, to question employees about the theft that took place, McConnel told me in the store's bathroom that the DA had already dismissed the shoplifting case. OK, if that was true, then what's the point to coming out to the store afterwards to interview the employees?

The private investigator told me that the Pappadopoulos family wanted to find out if Demetri was a liar. This wealthy dishonest family is on this Sacramento expedition to find out if their dishonest son is a liar and they have Lucky's top security man McConnel scheduling a tour for them at Lucky's beautfiful Carmichael store. This all-expense-paid tour comes packaged up with a 45-minute question and answer seminar with the store's employees that were involved in this case. Isn't that one of the most ridiculous things you have ever heard?

This dishonest wealthy family could have just bypassed this tour of this run-down Lucky Store, located in a run-down shopping center, and called me on the store phone and I would have told them "yes" their son is a liar to go along with the fact that their son is a thief. A local call that would have taken less than one minute and I probably would have answered that question over the phone by saying "Well, duh" to add some humor to it all.

Maybe McConnel should have started a Lucky Stores shoplifters catering service for those shoplifters who might have been able to use his unique talents and benefit from his influence?

McConnel must have been told that every employee working at Lucky 345 had "stupid" written on their forehead. Just because Lucky 345 Store Manager (Arlene George) managed this store like she had this word stamped on her forehead, wasn't a legitimate reason for him to have prejudiced his opinion about the rest of us working at Lucky.

What McConnel didn't know at the time was that I was the son of the greatest retail detective that ever lived. And also, he didn't know that I had made a copy of the shoplifting police report the day before this ruse of an interview took place.

How interesting to find out that the store's shoplifting report pertaining to Demetri Pappadopoulos was missing after he and the private investigator left the store--I couldn't find it anywhere. Now suppose for a moment that the Pappadopoulos' paid money to get that Lucky store police report...

I wonder how much money the Pappadopoulos' would have been willing to pay me for the copy they didn't know I had? Planning for the future, I could have put a thousand copies of that shoplifting report on E-Bay and bankrupted Ma and Pa Pappadopoulos in their effort to rid the world of any trace of Demetri's dishonesty ...LOL.. I mean, this is the same Ma and Pa Pappadopoulos who were later found guilty of torching their mansion for the insurance money.

Had I known which prison Ma Pappadopoulos was going to be doing time in, I might have sent a copy to her there. It would have been comical to have been able to ask her if she and her husband were struggling with the notion that their son Demetri might have been a liar while the two of them were planning the arson of their home for the insurance money? The same son who was caught sticking Lucky Stores un-paid sirloin steaks down his pants, for safekeeping, before enjoying at home.

The son of a very dishonest family with lots of money and a son with an unrealistic need to steal, intelligently discovers that underneath his pants is a perfect place to store the ill-gotten property of others. I know I am taking a big leap here by using the word "intelligently" (above) with this group of people but I felt this may have been my only opportunity to slip a word like this within this page.

My dad told me that in his career he had wealthy people, whom he had caught stealing, offer him money to drop their shoplifting charges. He never accepted any money from any of them and those were the thieves he would persue in the courts.

Now today, McConnel can't deny he told me that the DA dropped the shoplifting charge because Demetri didn't go past the checkstands. This is because I have an audio of him in San Leandro sharing that ridiculous reason with me--but he first made this remark to me while at the Lucky store. He and this private investigator probably spent many hours trying to figure out the best answer to give just in case somebody at the store questions anything about the "district attorney." Wow, McConnel might have pooped his pants had somebody thrown out the words "obstruction of justice."

So once again, why did he come to the store with a private investigator hired by this dishonest wealthy family if the DA had already dismissed the case? The DA told me later he had never even seen the case. And this dishonest wealthy family had friends within the Sacramento County Sheriff's Dept.

The top security guy for Lucky Stores is involved in these kinds of shenanigans....What a joke of a top security man when his concern is protecting the security and reputation of one of Sacramento most prominent (dishonest) families and not Lucky Stores assets.

He was using Lucky's costly employee-employment "time" all to the benefit of a bunch of Sacramento thieves and under who's authority? McConnel's? Now add that additional costly service to the total cost of Demetri's theft along with the total cost of the merchandise Demetri broke/destroyed while trying to escape from the store after he was apprehended and what do you have? No, not girls gone wild---but-- you have thieves gone costly. I sure wouldn't want to own this company's stock.

It turned out that Lucky Stores would rather intimidate, harass and steal from the guy who's catching the thieves stealing from them than prosecuting the thieves caught stealing from them. Yep, that sounds like a typical experience going on in my life while working for Lucky.

When Lucky's top security man Bob McConnel and the family-hired-private-investigator arrived at the Lucky store to interview employee's about the shoplifting incidence that took place with Demetri, McConnel indicated that the DA had already dismissed the shoplifting charge. Now understand that Demetri was already on probation for an unrelated criminal offense.

If you read my statement above (text in white in the picture above) of the events that took place during the shoplifting episode at the store, you will notice at the end it states that Demetri cause a fight inside the store. So the DA dismissed this criminal offense belonging to a person who was already on probation for a different criminal offense, after he tried to steal a steak, caused a commotion inside the store and broke/destroyed nearly $80(?) worth of merchandise trying to escape from the store?

If I hadn't made a copy of the police report and the store's shoplifting report, it is my opinion that after McConnel and this private investigator leave Lucky Store #345, there is no longer any proof or record of Demetri being caught shoplifting in this Lucky store on June 20, 1991.

Overall, I really didn't care about this Pappadopoulos crap until I realized the shenanigans that were going on with this wealthy family and Lucky's top security guy. Typical stuff going on at Lucky with typical unethical people employed at Lucky.