Mindless Senseless Destruction

Reward In Cadillac Vandalism Case Is Raised To $1,000

Sept. 3, 2015

It was a frigid Tuesday morning in January when Rick and Tammy Grant arrived at the back of a building in downtown Cadillac they’d entered a thousand times before – and something wasn’t right.

A burgundy and white cap sat at the top of the stairs leading to the basement; it was a foreign object. They didn’t know immediately, but that hat signaled their lives were about to change.

"I THOUGHT THE CEILING COLLAPSED"

They recognized the cap; it belonged to a long-shuttered sporting goods store that had used a storage room in the basement. The owner went out of business and left things behind. The cap should have been inside one of the storage rooms, sealed behind a steel door locked with a deadbolt.

"That was one of the rooms down there that was locked – steel doors – and so we knew something was weird. We didn’t even have to go down those steps. In fact, we chose not to go down those steps," Rick said.

"I looked at my husband and said, "˜We’ve been broken into,’" Tammy explained.

They walked into RJ Grants, the clothing shop they opened in 1992. They saw white dust covering everything near a door leading to the basement from within the store.

"I thought it was drywall dust," Tammy said. "I thought the ceiling had collapsed."

That dust came from an 80-pound bag of silica sand the Grants used to prop open the door. The vandals had pounded the bag against the door in a failed attempt to access the main store. The bag broke, spilling dust everywhere, but the door held.

It’s fortunate the bag broke before the door opened. The Grants are certain if the vandals had gotten into the main room, their business wouldn’t have survived.

"They tried to bust that door down with that bag of silica sand and they couldn’t do it because I’ve got barrel bolts that are against the fire marshal’s wishes that I put back on there," Rick said. "Had I not had them on there, we’d be done."

POLICE CALLED AND DAMAGE TOLLED

When Rick opened the door to the basement, he found footprints in the white dust and the couple feared that whoever did this might still be downstairs.

They called the police. The Cadillac Police officer who responded spent three hours taking pictures of the damage.

What they found downstairs was staggering and senseless. There was so much destruction they’ve had to work eighthour shifts every Sunday since that day cleaning it up, and they still aren’t close to finished.

"We’re still on the front lines, my wife and I," Rick said. "We were here yesterday. We have worked every Sunday since Jan. 13 in that basement, and we’ve put a lot of our own you- know-what in that basement."

Vandals kicked through steel doors locked with deadbolts. The doors could be broken because they opened in, rather than out. If the doors had backed up against door jams they would have been almost impossible to force open with a kick.

Where the miscreants gained access, all they did was destroy.

"It was very malicious. They shot off fire extinguishers; they used whatever was in a container down there that had liquid in it," Rick said. "A lot of it was very nasty, nasty stuff that shouldn’t have been touched. It was toxic and they just busted that all over the walls, busted it all over the clothing. They went through everything."

The Grants lost irreplaceable things: heirlooms from their grandparents like Stetson hats from the ’20s still packed in original boxes, an Eisenhower jacket owned by Rick’s father, collectible toys from the ’70s and ’80s and a typewriter that had been passed down to Tammy, smashed on the floor.

"It might sound simple to someone else, but it was the typewriter that my grandparents bought my mother when she was in junior high to write her reports, and she gave it to me when I was that age," Tammy said. "It was hideous, just hideous. It just makes you sick."

SPRING INVENTORY LOST

A strange thing about the crime is that very little was stolen.

The thieves stole a prom dress, a pair of aqua high-heel shoes and some baseball cards.

"I say to people who ask me that question, I go, "˜I wish they would have stole some things and left.’ It would have been a piece of cake compared to what was done," Rick said.

The worst loss was the store’s entire spring inventory.

Clothes were steamed, tagged and ready to be put on display in February. The $65,000 inventory was a total loss. By the time the Grants discovered it was uninsured, it was too late.

The couple bought the building in 1997 when they were leasing space across the street. They couldn’t move in right away, so when they got insurance for the structure, the policy did not include inventory coverage. That never changed when they moved.

"So, I called my insurance man and I said, "˜I’ve got the figures’ and then I started through the figures and he stopped me in the middle of the conversation, he said, "˜Rick, I don’t have you for any inventory insurance,’" Rick said. "That 2015 spring inventory, we had to – outof-pocket – we had to literally finance that.

We had to pay for that. We couldn’t put it out. We had to get rid of it and buy more spring inventory. So, I mean, it was a huge hit for us. I mean, it was not good."

A $500 REWARD, UPPED TO $1,000

It’s been almost nine months and the case has gone cold, but an anonymous donor appeared, offering a $500 reward, which was just doubled to $1,000.

The Grants were working in their store when the downtown business owner stopped by.

"He said, "˜By the way, have they caught those guys?’ And I said, "˜No, no. Nothing going on yet,’" Rick said. "And he said, "˜Oh, we’re going to do something about it.’ And he’s of means that he can do something about it."

If someone is arrested, the Grants don’t expect to get much back.

"There will be zero, I mean, in my opinion, they don’t have nothing," Rick said.

In 2010, the store was broken into; some shoes were stolen and damage was estimated at $500.

They hope the 2015 vandals are caught the same way those 2010 thieves were.

"Two weeks later they got mouthy at high school. They were bragging about their new shoes," Rick said.

Restitution didn’t mean much in that case. "We got the shoes back – of course, worn, and I gifted them to a friend," Rick said. "We received $11 every three months for a period of five years. It was, like, almost a joke."

VANDALISM IS A TURNING POINT

Cadillac Police Lt. Todd Golnick is guardedly hopeful the $1,000 reward will prompt someone to come forward. He said that’s likely the only way the case will be solved.

"We fully believe that they’re young and that they had to have bragged and discussed this," he said. "We’re just a tip away."

Golnick credits a $1,000 reward – donated by the same anonymous businessman – for information that solved a public restroom vandalism case earlier this year.

Some of the people responsible in the restroom case may be responsible for the RJ Grant case, but Golnick said, so far, that lead is a dead end.

"They’re not ruled out at all. When it came to the bathrooms, there ended up being three people involved," he said. "One of them was the weak link. We knew that. We’ve dealt with the people. When we got to the weak link, he gave it up. And he gave up some other crimes, and I honestly believe he would have given this up if he had some information on it."

Golnick and Officer Jeff Rork believe the restroom vandalism case was a turning point in the community’s attitude toward crime.

"If there is a silver lining to all this, the destruction of the bathrooms might be the greatest thing that ever happened to crime in this city because it shows that there’s just this tremendous community partnership," Rork said. "I don’t want to say it wasn’t always there, but now it’s at the frontline."

STRAIN ON A HUSBAND-WIFE TEAM

The couple met in 1991. Tammy worked in retail downstate before she moved to Cadillac; Rick has worked in clothing stores in Cadillac since 1971, when he was hired at Ray’s Clothing Store, one of five men’s clothing stores on Mitchell Street at the time. There has never been anything like this before.

"This has taken a huge toll. What’s awful is, you’ve got to come back in here every day after, which we did, and you’ve got to walk through it, you’ve got to live it," Rick said. "For January and February, and even into March, whenever we would come in here, we were both terrified. I mean, because if we had come through that door and they had met us at the top of the stairway, who knows?" At the same time, the event has revealed the best of Cadillac.

"The good news, from what we’ve experienced here, is just an incredible amount of people calling, an incredible amount of people coming in. We had people that we didn’t even know that heard about it and they just called and said, "˜Is there something we can do?’" Rick said. "That kind of made Tammy and I feel like, "˜Yea. We can keep doing this.’" One man offered the Grants the service of an ace tracking dog.

"I said, "˜No, no, no, no, no, we can’t do that,’" Rick said. "I said, "˜A lot of the stuff in that basement is very toxic. I would never consider putting a dog down there.’"

HARD, PHYSICAL LABOR

What happened still makes no sense to the Grants. Tammy said officers told her that drugs were probably the precursor to the crime.

"They’ve all said that it’s somewhat of a trend among youths," she said. "They get high on drugs – they didn’t specifically say what kind of drugs – and then they just demolish things. They said that they get this energy from the drugs. I don’t understand it because I don’t think that way."

Use of methamphetamine, which is often found in Cadillac drug busts, is characterized by bursts of senseless energy. That’s another troublesome thing: the hard physical labor involved.

"I thought, "˜What hard work.’ I mean, they could have used that energy to do good things," Tammy said. "They could have shoveled somebody’s snow, you know?"

There is a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the crime. Police believe it was a group of young males and one or more females. Anyone with information should contact the Cadillac Police Department at (231) 775-3491 or the Cadillac Area Silent Observer at (231) 779-9215.