EAST HELENA — A family-owned business is picking up the pieces after a burglary at their store on Main Street in East Helena.
Estella and Berkley Conrad got a call about an alarm at their business, Cliff’s Jewelry, on Aug. 2. When they arrived, they realized it was not a false alarm.
“I wish it had been a false alarm,” Berkley Conrad said. “The shock factor was kind of delayed for me. You come in and you see these things, and you’re walking around in almost disbelief but when you see it, it’s real.”
Someone broke into the store—smashing glass and stealing merchandise. In all, about $35,000 worth of jewelry was stolen, and $5,000 worth of damage was done.
“We just began that morning with cleanup,” Estella Conrad said. “It felt like something positive, a step we could make, so we just started cleaning up.”
The East Helena Police Department is investigating the case. East Helena Police Chief Mike Sanders said he is not sure how many people are involved in the burglary, but it does not appear to have been a spur-of-the-moment action.
“It definitely seems like it was something that was organized,” Sanders said. “The person knew what they were doing, what they were going after.”
Sanders said an incident like this is not common in East Helena.
“In the last two-and-a-half years I’ve been here, we haven’t had a business burglary,” Sanders said.
Cliff’s Jewelry was founded by Estella Conrad’s parents in 1972, and she said she and Berkley have owned it for about 40 years. In all that time, the Conrads said they have never experienced anything like this burglary. The situation has left them shaken.
“It’s terrifying in thinking that they might come back,” Estella said.
Police are looking for information from the public to help solve the case, including video surveillance footage. Sanders requested people in the area to check their home cameras for suspicious activity between 4am and 7:30am on August 2nd.
Additionally, $35,000 worth of jewelry is a lot for a person to suddenly have.
“If they’re hearing of people with large amounts of jewelry, valuable jewelry that they’re trying to ged rid of for cheap dollar amounts, that would be a red flag,” Sanders said.
As law enforcement investigates, the Conrads are picking up the pieces and moving forward.
“We are planning to continue and do what we’ve always done for 50 years and help our customers,” Estella Conrad said. “We’ll be here.”
Anyone with information about the burglary is asked to call the East Helena Police Department or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 406-443-2000 or at the Crime Stoppers website.
