Staff writer
An unreasonably thirsty patron at Ampride in Hillsboro decided to take a Gatorade from the shelves, have some, and put it back where he found it.
Store manager Laura Legg said high-quality security cameras were used to identify the individual, and the situation was resolved without involving legal authorities.
“It was just a kid being a kid,” Legg said. “He was old enough to where he should have known better, but still.”
The individual, who was not identified for this story, was in the store with a friend, who witnessed the sneaked swigs. Legg said the pair was out of sight of the store clerk, but was seen by a former employee who was shopping at the time.
“He and his buddy apologized, he paid for the drink, and both of them were kicked out of the store,” Legg said.
Legg credited the store’s security cameras, which she said have tremendous zooming capabilities.
“The co-op invested many thousands of dollars in the cameras,” she said. “They’re like the ones on CSI.”
Legg said neither the Hillsboro Ampride nor the Marion location have shoplifting problems, thanks in part to the cameras, but that Hillsboro has more instances of shoplifting because it draws a generally younger crowd.
“Most kids don’t understand why they shouldn’t do it,” she said. “They don’t realize that it drives up the prices of everything else. At the Marion location we have an older crowd. Older customers are usually more respectful.”
Legg posted the anecdote to social media, she said, “kind of to shame the ones that did it.”
“Ordinarily we’d prosecute, and that’s why we don’t have a shoplifting problem,” she said. “But we were able to take care of it. Hopefully we taught them some lessons their mother forgot to teach them.”