Could you imagine a heist or criminal operation as critical as this? This is the type of scenario you see in movies. You could have never imagined this to happen in real life, but it did. That’s probably what frightens us the most, the fact that sometimes movies are never too far from becoming a reality.
The manager of Steve Quick Jeweler, Dana Sullivan, was surprised to what she saw when she arrived to work on Wednesday morning. Not your ordinary sighting at work, she discovered a large hole behind the store’s safe. As a jewelry business, they know to invest in a high security safe, but it didn’t matter in this case. The TL-30 Rated Safe weighed in at about two tons, almost impossible for any thief to remove it from it’s place without being caught. These types of safes can also withstand attacks from professional thieves and experts for at least 30 minutes. However, the thieves were able to find a weak spot.
Sullivan says, “Everything was fine until I opened the door and saw there was dust everywhere. I thought the ceiling had fallen in. I couldn’t figure out what was happening. I looked around the corner and saw the hole.” Steve Quick, the owner of the business for 25 years, believes it could have been an inside job. “They knew what they were doing and what’s got us spooked is that they circumvented our security system, which is state of the art, or they had some sort of information,” Quick said.
The thieves began their operation on Tuesday evening where they raided a sushi restaurant located right next door. From there, they were able to break down through the wall at the same location, where they could finally reach the safe. The safe was located in the back inside a small office, which is right next to Quick’s desk. “So they were able to stay under my desk, tunnel under, and if you go in back, you can see the hole in the bottom of the safe,” Quick said.
The burglars were able to remain undetected from surveillance because that was the only area not monitored by cameras or motion detectors. That issue was immediately resolved once they figured it out. Once they were able to cut into the bottom of the safe, they gained access to its bottom shelves. “And then these were some of the storage containers we used to keep the gems in, and they were able to crush these and pull them out through that small hole, all of them containing gems, there was a gem collection that we’ve been collecting for 25 years, so it’s a pretty devastating loss,” Quick said.
In light of the situation, Quick says that they are fully insured and that none of the jewelry stolen belonged to any of their customers. “Everything is accounted for, the only things that are missing belonged to us,” Quick said.
After a huge loss, the staff is now busy making sure to account for all the inventory of the merchandise. As disappointed and saddened Quick is, he says that it comes within the territory of being in the jewelry business. “We’ve had armed robberies, we do everything we can, we take security very seriously, but there are people out there, and once in a while they succeed,” he said. The Chicago police have yet to make any arrests in this case.
