Thieves steal from charity
At 1:40 a.m. March 15, a man and a woman brazenly backed their pickup truck to Logan’s Run Rescue Thrift Store on U.S. 64 West and began stealing donations. They sifted through all the bags and boxes, taking their time to grab all those things they felt were valuable, and ended up filling their truck bed before driving off.
It is easy to be disgusted by this behavior. Some may question, “Why would someone steal from a charity that not only gives back to the animals in our community, but also helps the people in our community by providing them an affordable place to shop for things they need?”
People who survive solely on Social Security shop with us. People with a disability shop with us. Parents trying to make ends meet, who need clothes for their children, shop with us. People who like a great deal shop with us.
I can’t help but feel that man and woman stole from all the community when they stole from Logan’s Run Rescue. Those working in the thrift store are 100 percent volunteers. All we want to do is help our community by doing something meaningful, and those volunteers have worked too hard to have your donations stolen in the middle of the night.
Here is the thing – we are just one of many great charities that would have been glad to help them if they were in need. But this wasn’t that – not at 1:40 in the morning.
All of us need to just face the fact that even in great communities like ours, there are some who just live outside the law. This is not the first time where people have stolen donations or shoplifted, but this time we were ready.
Here is the good part of the story. With the advice of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office and the help from a retired police detective – our new security officer – Logan’s Run came up with a comprehensive plan to combat both shoplifters and those stealing donations from us, like this man and woman.
For example, we knew just where to put cameras up. We got excellent video of their license plate number and the truck they drove. We got both their faces. We have multiple angles from multiple cameras. When we called the sheriff’s office, they came down quickly, made the process easy and fast, and these thieves will be held accountable.
It was fun for us to work with Chief Deputy Joe Wood and the sheriff’s office. Too many times we focus on the negative, but what about our small-town sheriff’s office taking the time to help a local small business and charity?
Yes, it is easy to be mad and angry at the people who stole from us, and we are, but the silver lining was the help and collaboration we got to finally catch them.
We are always looking for great volunteers to help the animals and people of our community. Please consider stopping by our thrift store and filling out a volunteer application.
Mark Lyden and Logan’s Run Rescue volunteers, Murphy
Roads are not trash dumps
I have been busy since the 1990s with the litter problem. It never goes away. People treat the roads like a garbage dump. When will this problem end?
I’ve been out picking up litter for the last week in the first two miles of N.C. 141. I’m almost halfway done – 33 bags full. I want to say something to young mothers with infants – you need to change your babies diapers, put it in a bag and empty it in your garbage at home or in a public receptacle, not on the highway.
So far besides beer cans, bottles and soda cans, I’ve picked up 30 Bootlegger peach and raspberry alcohol bottles that are glass. If they break, people can get hurt walking on the grass because of those bottles.
We had a poster contest at the school system a few years, and students drew pictures of the litter problems. I had a Murphy-Andrews litters challenge many years ago, where I got 85 prizes from businesses. Groups every half-mile picked up litter.
We put red stakes on the median on Murphy’s end and green stakes on Andrews median. Almost everyone got a prize, and the steak house in Murphy had a trophy for the town that picked up the most bags.
Like people have said in the past, we live in a beautiful mountain area. The weather is not too extreme, but if people want to vacation here or are thinking of moving here they have second thoughts because of the state of our roads.
What kind of people live here? Are we all slobs? No we aren’t, but the state of our roads gives us a bad impressions. If parents throw out litter, children will also do so.
Please keep roadsides clean. Keep a litter bag in your car.
Susan Fredrichs, Marble
Want a war? Institute draft
I am appalled when I listen to the call-in talk shows and hear how many fellow Americans have had a gigantic memory lapse and are in favor of poking a finger in the eye of the Russian bear.
Perhaps, over the years, we have become insensitive what war can do to our country. Just as the Ukrainians don’t seem to mind that we would be willing to help them with their conflict, many of us seem comfortable that our mercenaries would bear the brunt of any conflict with an armed enemy and not our family members.
I have written to my representative and asked him to recommend to President Joe Biden that he should reinstitute the draft, for both men and women. Perhaps the image of husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and children coming home in body bags might change their thinking about what America’s foreign policy should be.
J.B. Robert, Hot House
U.S. is crying out for action
Rather than sit and do nothing as the world grows ever closer to the brink of World War III, due to the war between Russia and Ukraine, I have written my senators, representatives and now you to beg you to call for immediate investigation, hearings, action in the capital, to probe the ways in which our president and other high-ranking politicians on both sides of the aisle have been compromised by their own or their offspring’s shady entanglements with Ukrainian corruption.
All Americans and the media should be crying out for action, as we know they would if any previous presidents’ offspring had been involved in actions so ripe for blackmail.
It is past time for anyone of good conscience to try to save our country’s citizenry through whatever legal actions we can take.
God help us.
Maggie Hutson, Murphy