Tuesday, November 5, 2024 at 11:08 AM
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HCFS officials stunned by thrift store burglary, loss

HCFS officials stunned by thrift store burglary, loss
Edgar Ajcac

Boerne police have arrested a suspect in the March 22 burglary of the Random Hangers Thrift Shop, operated by Hill Country Family Services.

A Boerne police spokesman said Edgar Ajcac, 24, was expected to be charged with burglary of a building sometime March 29. He was booked into the Kendall County Detention Center on March 28 on an unrelated charge of continuous violence against a family member.

Hill Country Family Services officials turned over video taken the night of the break-in, which HCFS President Staci Almager said shows the thief “shopping” through the store, at 114 W. Advogt St., for more than an hour.

An initial dollar estimate of $5,000 of goods will undoubtedly climb, Almager said, as HCFS official remain stunned by the break-in.

“They took away our ability to serve, and that’s hard to fathom,” Almager said in the days following a weekend spent cleaning and itemizing. She said all proceeds from sales at the thrift store are used to buy food for the HCFS Corner Cupboard food pantry.

Almager said the price tag value of the stolen items will probably top $10,000 — a dollar amount that reflects what items sell for, but not their true worth. Many items, at retail value, are worth five to 10 times more than the items’ price tags in the store.

“He was taking things that hadn’t been sorted, priced and placed on shelves yet,” she said. “We had a whole bin of designer purses, probably 50 of them, that he took, all of them.”

Random Hangars appeals to Boerne’s philanthropic residents, she said, because of HCFS’s reputation of using nearly all of the sale proceeds to feed Boerne residents with food insecurity issues.

“People intentionally come here to give us the best of what they have, because people know we’re a local shop that serves our local community. The catastrophic part of this is, there are things that hadn’t been processed,” she said.

Last year, $329,000 out of that location went to buy food for Kendall County clientele. Nine-hundred and fifty-eight people were served last year, unduplicated individuals.

“I think we were all in a state of shock, really. Who steals from a nonprofit?” she said.

Video of the incident was turned over to BPD, who she said spent an hour dusting the store for evidence. Police took blood samples as the thief cut himself on the window he broke to gain entry.

“The sad thing is, if he needed something, we probably would have given it to him if he’d come in,” she said. “Now, the things taken away interrupt my ability to sell and to put food on people’s tables here in Kendall County.”


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