Robbed. Robbed again. Robbed yet again!!!

With this new year bring an anniversary for me. I started as Executive Director of Everyday Joe's at the very beginning of 2006. My first day was January 2nd. In some ways it was a long year but in many ways it was a short year. Mostly it was a learning year.

The transition was a smooth one. I had plenty of volunteer hours as a foundation and also being on the board for all those years it was not entirely new to me. And at the time I had a lot of help from Hannah who was our one paid barista. Most of my first month was spent cleaning and getting the place organized. And at the beginning of February Chris started as the assistant director.

The first big challenged we faced was theft. In late February a deposit turned up missing. And honestly I was a bit naive with that one. I thought that maybe the envelope had been misplaced or accidentally thrown away, something along those lines. But then a few weeks later we got robbed again. This time it was obvious. Someone from the inside who knew how we did things open the safe and took the money and closed the safe again.

This was pretty disturbing but it was important to focus on taking steps so that it did not happen again, and not seeking out the thief. So we bought a small drop safe and bolted it to the floor under the counter. As well as some other security measures. I thought that would be the end of it. But one morning I got a call from Chris who was opening that day telling me the safe was gone. A thief had completely ripped the safe out of the ground. It was a little heartbreaking.

So we stepped up security yet again. And even planned on getting a security system installed. And now people wanted the thief caught. I would like that too but I knew we really needed to focus on protecting ourselves and not going on a hunt. I feel that sort of thing would produce more negatives than positives.

I am thankful that we have not been robbed since. Joe's did lose some of its innocence through all that though. But overall I think we are better having gotten through it. I believe it helped the people of Timberline Oldtown grow closer to Everyday Joe's through the support they offered. They gave much more than was lost.

Boy when I sat down to write here today I did not intend on talking about the thefts. Especially for that long. I'll have to continue with my year in review in the next post. They say it is wise to keep blog posts short.