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Vol Texan wrote:My wife had two stories involving her EDC this week - so that's why I named these Part 1 and Part 2. Part 2 is found here.

Last Thursday, my wife was in her jewelry store, and a pair of yoots walked in. They were in their late teens, dressed like a couple of hood rats, and she didn't get a good vibe about them. It was one of the rare instances where she was alone in the store, as she'd let her other employees out earlier in the day for personal business.

She left her jeweler's bench and met them halfway through the store, and her Spidey Sense was on overload. One of them (Thing 1) moved to his left, toward her more expensive cases (away from her cash register area), and started asking tons of questions about specific pieces, "Is this real gold?" "Are these real diamonds?", etc. The other guy (Thing 2) moved to their right, to an area where he wouldn't necessarily be easy to see while Thing 1 kept peppering her with questions.

She was now in the right rear corner of her store (viewed by looking forward toward the street).

After a few moments, Thing 3 came into the store, and quickly approached my wife and Thing 1. She had already separated herself from them as much as possible, by keeping a display table between them, but she was rapidly (a) running out of safe zone, and (b) rapidly losing all sight of Thing 2 and the register area while Things 1 and 3 had her occupied.

They were in no way threatening, but she recognized what was about to happen. She was either being cased for a late night burglary later, or it was going to be a smash-and-grab for her cash drawer / computer.

At that moment, she felt the urge to 'adjust herself' and make a point of letting the yoots see her actions. She lifted her shirt a bit on her strong side, hiked up her jeans with an audible, "Sorry guys, I've been sitting at my work bench all day, and I need to adjust a bit." Her hand rested on the grip of her handgun in a Crossbreed IWB holster and (in her words), she let it linger for a few moments.

Thing 1 locked eyes with her, and then on her gun, and immediately spun and walked toward the door. He grabbed Thing 3 on the way out, and yelled to his buddies, "Time to go."

Thing 2 was mostly obscured by a column, so he had no idea what was going on, and said, "But I'm not done here."

Thing 1 emphasized, "Yes, you are, it's TIME TO GO." As they closed the front door behind them, Thing 1 was very animated in his descriptions to them as to what he had seen.

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This was Thursday evening. Friday morning, my wife's heart fell from her chest when she saw two constable units parked in front of her store. After she parked and talked to them, she learned that her store was untouched, but two of her neighbors had suffered smash and grab burglaries overnight - one was two doors to the right, and the other was three doors to the left, across the street. Both robberies were under 1 minute in length, and in both stores, they targeted only the computer / cash drawers.

Camera footage from the previous day's shifts and during the burglaries indicated that (a) the same guys had cased several stores in the area on Thursday, and (b) the punks that hit the stores overnight wore masks, but had many of the same physical characteristics (size, mannerisms, ethnicity) of the ones who had cased the stores.

Nobody can know for sure, but my wife hopes that her actions may have helped their decision making process when selecting stores other than hers for their overnight activities.