CHICAGO (WGN) — The scarecrows outside Mission Possible resale shop in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood could not scare off a burglar.
“I got an alert from my phone at home from my security company and it said motion was detected so they called the police,” owner Janet Cullen said.
Cullen says it was just before midnight Sunday. When she and police arrived, her door was smashed.
“I’m a person of faith so in the moment I said either I can have a pity party, or I can be grateful, so I tried to think of things I was grateful for, including they didn’t ransack the store, we didn’t have any money in the store,” Cullen said.
Surveillance video shows a man in a light-colored ball cap going straight for the register, but he left with nothing. It appears he may have headed several blocks down North Lincoln Ave to Zulu Cat and Dog Grooming.
Jackie Jockell has been working her magic at Zulu since 2007.
“I got a call from CPD at 12:30 at night,” she said.
Jockell also woke up to the news of a break-in. Her surveillance video shows a man in a similar light-colored ball cap digging through her register.
“It’s very disappointing. Normally this neighborhood is very safe, and we just don’t expect that’s going to be happening here,” Jockell said.
Though the burglar left Mission Possible empty-handed, the $1,200 in damage to the door was enough to cause real financial strain on the new business that hasn’t yet turned a profit.
But Cullen says she quickly found light in the dark. A customer offered to pay for the repairs.
“It would have set us back, but it did not,” Cullen said. “September was a slow month for us, so we were behind on the rent. Someone else offered to pay so it caught us up with that.”
Business in the days since has boomed at the shop, which will donate some of its future profits to its mission: trauma-informed, faith-based counseling.
“We were already at a deficit so to have people step up, it just encourages me to keep going,” Cullen said.
Chicago police say no one is in custody for either break-in. If detectives connect the incidents, they will issue a community alert.
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