Here is another exciting story about a shoplifter I caught which eventually ensnared the top security man for Lucky Stores. It took place in June of 1991 and here are the details:
While on my lunch break, I was looking out of the security window at the back of the store, above the meat department, and noticed a fit-looking young guy walking down an aisle holding a package of meat. He left that aisle and went over to another aisle. I quickly moved along the cat-walk and followed him over to that aisle where I was able to see him stick that package of meat underneath his clean white T-shirt and down his pants. He then made contact with another guy in that aisle who appeared to be his friend.
I immediately climbed down from the cat-walk, then moved quickly to the sales floor and got the attention of another employee (John Stevenson) and told him about the young man I observed sticking a package of meat down his pants. I needed John to come with me when I confronted the young man.
Now having John as a back-up employee and a witness to me stopping this young guy, I came face to face with him in the middle of the sales floor, close to the registers/checkstands
When I confronted the young man the first thing I did was point to the security window high up on the wall at the back of the store and asked him "Do you believe in that security window?" The young guy told me "no" while he didn't appear he wanted to know where I was going with that question. Getting right to the point I told him I wanted the package of meat he stuck underneath his pants. He told me he didn't stick any meat underneath his pants. I asked him again to give me the package of meat and once again he told me he didn't have anything. I finally told him that I was going to call the police to the store and have them search him...and once again he told me he didn't have anything.
Knowing that I was wasting time, I turned around and headed to the office to call the police. When he realized I was serious about calling the police, he took the meat out from underneath his pants to give to me but I informed him that it was too late. John grabbed the young man by the arm and was leading him to the office when the young man created a scuffle in an effort to escape from the store. Not only was he an ISS (incompetent steak stealer), but he was also a SAUG
(sloppy and unskillful guy) in his ability to escape because he ran straight into a wine display, knocking it over and breaking many bottles of wine.
The police were summoned to the store to make an arrest. When the arresting police officer saw the last name of this young man he told me that nothing will probably happen to him because he belonged to a prominent Sacramento family and his parents had friends inside the Sacramento sheriff's department.
Ah, the true sound of justice was now ringing inside my ears from a few words spoken to me by an "enforcer of the law" who took it upon himself to judicially tell me that the punishment and consequences for shoplifting and the destruction of private property suddenly became mitigated away by the influence and prominence of a wealthy family living within the community with convenient ties to the police.
It probably doesn't happen very often when an ISS (insignificant stolen steak), pulled out of a POT (pants of a thief), will amazingly turn an arresting police officer into an active presiding judge while he's looking at the facts of a criminal case when connected to the affluent of this world. In addition to that, I am also sure he occasionally sees that the road to justice is paved differently for the wealthy because in many cases they provide themselves built-in escape routes and detours to elude responsibility so they never have to be accountable to anybody. Escape routes and detours that this police officer knows aren't afforded to the AARP (average accountable responsible person).
A police report was written/filed against the young man, after which, he was released to his mother who drove up to the front of the store in an expensive fancy car that whisked her son away to a secure wealthy zip code, behind iron gates, to where she could protect him from the perils of having to take personal responsibility for one's own actions and try to forget about the inconsiderate grocery store employee who had the audacity to ruin her son's day on such a beautiful sunny afternoon by not letting him steal a steak. Some days it must be a real bummer to be absurdly wealthy, arrogantly entitled and acutely narcissistic.
A copy of that police report was given to us and filed away at the store. Note: Had he given me the steak, when I first asked him for it, I would have just kicked him out of the store. Was I being too unreasonable to expect him to give me back the steak that he wanted to steal or should I have just enabled him, like his parents were doing, and picked out a good barbecue sauce for him to steal too so he could enjoy his stolen steak even more, later that evening?
It's hard for me to swallow that anything edible, flavored with dishonesty, not causing indigestion while sitting in the stomach of somebody with integrity. And even harder for me to swallow is the fact that the mathematical equation for a family mansion + fancy cars + abundance in everything, didn't = a $5 bill being found sitting at the bottom of a young man's pants pockets that could have honestly been used to pay for a steak. Seemingly small change that would have caused a large change towards his destiny on that day. "Go figure," to say the least!
Some time later, I was informed by the store manager (Arlene George) that the parents of this young man had hired a private investigator (PI), and this private investigator, along with Lucky's top security man, were going to come out to our store and interview the employees involved in catching this young man stealing....so I was put on notice that I and the other employee (John) would be questioned about this incident some day in the future.
When the PI and our company's top security man (Bob McConnell), came to the store to interview me and the other employee John, I thought to myself that this interview was absurd, especially by the questions I was being asked and the remarks being made by the PI. I must say I was really impressed by the PI being able to actually keep a straight face when he told me that one of the reasons he was asked to come to the store to talk to me was that this young man's parents wanted to find out if their son had been lying about stealing this steak. What? Really? This was totally ridiculous....so ridiculous that I thought the PI was going to drop to his knees and burst out laughing.
After this interview was over, I met Lucky's top security man (Bob), inside of the men's room. While there I told Bob that we had a strong shoplifting case against this young man and Bob quickly told me, while sporting a straight face too, that the District Attorney had already dismissed the case. When he made that remark to me I suddenly realized there was really no reason for this interview and determined it was all just a sham especially given the fact that he said the DA had already dismissed the case. I would bet that the odds are extremely high that most people in this world never have to worry about lying to somebody while actively peeing in a public restroom. Think about that for a moment...when was the last time you had to lie to somebody while actively peeing in a public restroom?
Soon after the private investigator and Lucky's top security man left the store, I went to the manager's office and discovered that the copy of the police/shoplifting report on this young man was now missing.
However, what the private investigator (hired by this young man's wealthy family) and Lucky's top security man (Bob McConnell) didn't know was that I had made a copy of that shoplifting report a day before they arrived at the store to interview me.
A number of days later I contacted the District Attorney and discussed this strange shoplifting case with him to find out if this young man's shoplifting charge had really been dismissed...the District Attorney told me he had never even seen the case and he could find nothing around at all concerning this petty theft. It turned out that this young man was already on probation for a gun possession violation. In addition to the steak he tried to steal, which was no longer saleable because he put it underneath his pants, he broke many bottles of wine...so Bob wanted me to believe that the DA had dismissed this case....
I then contacted Bob to refresh his memory of this shoplifting case and him coming out to my store...and as expected, he committed himself to stating that the District Attorney had dismissed this case...Maui Bus driver, listen to Bob here ...I have to chuckle thinking that maybe Bob was once again actively peeing inside of a restroom, while talking to me over the phone, relaxedly planting more lies into my ear? Anything is possible. And I do have the audio of the DA telling me he never saw the case.
Below is the shoplifter/police report. The copy I made and the one they didn't know I had:
Below represents my views and thoughts concerning a chapter of my life that involved a wealthy, prominent family living in the Sacramento area, and how their example taught their children to grow up without boundries, honesty and disrespect for other people's property.
If the DA had really dismissed this case, then why would the top security man for Lucky Stores want to waste costly employee labor by allowing this private investigator to come to my store and talk about bullshit stuff...like the parents wanting to find out if their son was lying?
But really, in my opinion, their only purpose was to come to the store and get the shoplifter/police report...and that was it. Too bad they didn't get the copy I made...especially if it cost the Pappadopoulos' a lot of money to get the copy that Bob Mconnell obtained for them...
Lucky's top security man, McConnell, could have sought restitution from the Pappadopoulos family for the stolen meat and broken wine but evidently that wasn't part of his thinking when it came to rich parents willing to do anything to get their son off of a shoplifting charge.
I caught this young guy stealing, while off the clock and on my lunch break so that another typical Lucky Asshole could eventually use an unethical business practice to undue my efforts while he was on the clock and masquerading around as a security man for a supermarket chain. What a phucking clown! I sleep well at night because my debt in life is only connected to a credit card, which is paid off full at the end of each month!
Then some time later, the same parents to an ISSS (incompetent steak stealing son), who hired a private investigator to find out if their son was lying about stealing a steak, decided that there was nothing better for them to do than burn down their expensive home for the insurance money.
I wonder if their ISSSD (incompetent steak stealing son Demetri) hired a private investigator to find out if his parents were lying about the arson? Naw, he left his parents standing in a large pile of ashes, while also leaving them standing convicted of insurance fraud and arson, to go on to much bigger things as seen below:
In my opinion, Lucky Stores should have been responsible to this woman who was raped!
It suddenly dawned on me that when people, like the Pappadopoulos', have more arrogance inside their heads than brains and believe they have been blessed with a life-time of entitlement with absolutely no boundaries to contain their recklessness, nothing they do benefits anybody else other themselves while leaving scores of victims in its wake.
Maybe what should have happened back then was for those Pappadopoulos "ties" in the Sheriff's Department to come forward and share their good feelings about this family of cons & misfits. Them doing so would have actually shown that they were no better than the Pappadopoulos' by the perceived detours and escape routes they provided them while this Greek family traveled on the road.......to injustice.
Now, I believe, will be an appropriate time to find an unbroken bottle of wine, left behind by the clumsy lying incompetent steak stealing Demitri, at Lucky Store #345, to celebrate America's illusion of fairness and America's illusion of equal justice under the law.
Incredible illusions they are and with my glass of wine raised high, I would like to
make a toast and state that for everything going on in this world, all is vanity
while each of us are dangling from the ledge of this world's insanity.
I hope everybody will drink to that.
Had I taken my lunch break, on June 20, 1991, like every other employee, and not find myself looking through that security window trying to spot a shoplifter, I would have never encountered this Demetri guy and this story would have never been connected to my life. Maybe in the big scheme of things my current website actually was part of my fate in 1991 before the story of this shoplifter came about and this shoplifter story only came about to help me provide content for my future website.
Maybe Lucky's top security guy 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 nicely from his influence.
McConnel must have been told that every employee working at Lucky store #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't know at the time was that I was the son of the greatest retail detective that ever lived.
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?
Below is an article written by a Bee reporter named R.E. Graswich, some years later, where he is connecting Demetri Pappodopoulos to the son of Sheriff Lou Blanas to show how true it is that the Pappadopoulos' had connections within the Sheriff's department.
Below is the same article with the paragraph mentioning Demetri Pappadopoulos in a readable size.
I then sent an email to the writer of the above article:
