By Hook or By Crook, Part Two

Dek: The amazing true stories of three Atlanta-area retailers whose good instincts and quick thinking helped apprehend a pair of serial yarn thieves.

By Cheryl Krementz

Dateline: The Whole Nine Yarns; Woodstock, Georgia. It was nearing closing time on a Saturday in May, a sock class was in full swing and an older woman unknown to owner Debi Light was wandering the shop, asking about certain yarns. One particular skein Light had sold out of, the woman remarked, was also unavailable at nearby Why Knot Knit.

The woman—who looked, Light says, “like your typical grandmother”—chatted up knitters in the shop, taking particular interest in the green Noro one customer was using for a felted purse. She picked up the last remaining skein, though her hands were already full of Cascade, seemingly weighing a purchase. Light asked if she was ready to ring it all up. “No, no, I’m still looking,” Light recalls her saying. “I gotta run out to my car and get my checkbook.” She did, and when she returned she started talking to a sock-class attendee and handling a skein of pink-and-black hand-painted Artyarns stripes, which, like the Noro, was the last of its lot on the shelves. Once again Light asked the woman if she was ready to check out. “She said, ‘Oh, I forgot my pattern book’ [in the car], and she never came back in. And I was watching for her because I wanted to hurry up and rush her out.” When the felted-purse knitter cashed out soon after, she asked Light if the other woman had bought the green Noro, sparking a search for both that particular skein and the Artyarns stripes in which the mysterious shopper had also expressed interest. Neither was located, and the only thing Light remembered about the disappearing woman was that she’d mentioned she’d been at Why Knot Knit earlier that day. She called its owner, Monica Champion, and told her the story. Champion said it sounded as if Light were describing a frequent customer, Audrey Yandel, and provided the woman’s phone number and address.

Light phoned Yandel, leaving a message that Debi at the Whole Nine Yarns needed to speak with her. “She must have panicked when she saw that number, because she knew I didn’t know who she was,” Light says. “She was probably thinking I have hidden cameras.” About 15 minutes later, Yandel called back. Light got her talking by pretending she’d left a Classic Elite pattern book at the store. “Her voice was shaking and she was stuttering. I wanted to give her the opportunity to say, ‘By the way, I walked out with your yarn, totally forgetting.’ She didn’t offer it, so I said, ‘Audrey, and the yarn? Did you just absentmindedly walk out and forget to pay?’” After Yandel denied she had the yarn or knew where it was, Light remembers saying, “So you’re telling me you didn’t take it? I know otherwise, and if it’s not rectified today I’m taking it further.”

“Immediately [Yandel] said, ‘Tell me how much it is and I’ll pay for it.’ I said, ‘Are you telling me you walked out with it?’ ‘Oh, no, no,’ she said, ‘but I had it in my hand and if it’s not on your counter then tell me how much it is and I’ll send you the money.’” Light refused to accept a mailed check but allowed Yandel to use a credit card over the phone to buy the Noro and Artyarns skeins, which totaled $72.50; when the charge was approved Light thought that was that. “She didn’t ask me about prices,” Light says, “because now I know she was probably thinking she got off good.” Shortly after she hung up with Yandel, Light noticed that seven $13.25 skeins of Lorna’s Laces angora and a single needle in three different sizes from custom-made sets that cost $16.75 per pair were missing from displays she keeps near her register. Light called Champion back to report that her regular customer might be a theft risk, and Champion recalled Yandel had mentioned she’d be back to Why Knot Knit the next day, to get help with a sock.

Although Sunday is Champion’s day off, she instructed her staff to call her as soon as Yandel got there, which they did. “We were on DefCon 4,” says Champion. “I got to the shop and she was in my sock area—that was her new thing, socks. I sat her down in one of the back rooms and said, ‘Audrey, this is a small community. We talk to each other. You have a problem stealing.’ And I proceeded to give her the ‘you’re-stealing-from-my-children’ speech, which I didn’t know I had in me. She stared at me and said, ‘I have a problem.’ I said, ‘You have a bigger problem now, me.’” Champion then wrested Yandel’s Louis Vuitton bag away from her and found four pairs of Lantern Moon double points, about six pairs of Skacel needles and some Noro she’d taken while two employees were “watching her like a hawk. I grabbed her by the wrist, dragged her to the front, got the cordless phone and said, ‘You are so going to jail.’”

When the police arrived, Yandel denied taking the goods, despite a bagful of evidence to the contrary. Champion gained the police’s permission to snap Yandel’s photo (featured in the August edition of YMN), which she circulated to more than a dozen other area yarn shops, and when she looked in Yandel’s Lexus she found a parole officer’s business card. “So bottom line, she went to jail,” says Champion. “And then, when she had to go to court a week later to face my charges [after having been bailed out], she was so stressed out she went and stole from another yarn shop up the street.”

Dunwoody Yarn Shop, to be exact. Owner Julie Elledge was in the back room when she spotted Yandel on the screen hooked up to her surveillance camera. Elledge recognized the woman from the mug shot Champion had e-mailed the prior week and watched as Yandel “put all this stuff in her bag, every size Clover double-pointed needles I have. I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe this lady, she’s stealing from me. What do I do?’ So I ran out and said, ‘Can I help you with something?’ And she got kind of spooked, ‘Oh, no, no.’ I stood right beside her until she got scared enough to leave.” Elledge followed Yandel out to the parking lot and said, “‘Ma’am, you can just give me what’s in your bag or I can call the police.’ She’s like, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ and was really upset. She had been in court that morning and was all nervous about it and said that’s why she wanted to go steal.” Once again, Yandel was handcuffed and arrested, and in the back of her Lexus, according to Champion, was stolen merchandise from Why Knot Knit.

Champion estimates Yandel has taken $4,000 worth of her merchandise over the course of about a year and has pressed pending theft-by-shoplifting charges against the 68-year-old serial shoplifter, who has in the past pled guilty to this exact charge three other times. No court date has yet been set. Yandel does not answer her phone and has not returned any of YMN’s many voice messages; her court-appointed attorney, Keith Gammage, said he is waiting for the prosecution to turn over the evidence against Yandel before he can say whether she would once again plead guilty to a theft-by-shoplifting charge.

Amazingly, another woman, Michaeleen Rose, 46, was also arrested in May for stealing at Atlanta-area yarn shops. Before he bailed her out, Rose’s husband, Edward, invited the Whole Nine Yarns’ Debi Light into their home to recover inventory. The amount of fiber she found around the Roses’ house—“six [lugs] in the living room, six in the basement, six in the hall, three in the master bedroom, three in a guest bedroom”—astounded her. “The most bizarre thing,” Light says, “was that our yarn was very well taken care of in Baggies of 10. In one Baggie there may have been four of my skeins, four of Betsy’s [Laundon, owner of Cast-On Cottage in nearby Roswell] and two of someone else’s. Same yarn, same color, with labels facing in the same direction.”

Light and her manager took 12 “great big garbage bags” back to the shop. “I have a 2,200-square-foot store,” says Light. “The whole back was covered in yarn. We had to inventory it for the [police] report. It was 2 in the morning when we finished; my manager was totally numb. She said, ‘You ready for this? $12,700 is what we recovered.’ I just about fainted.”

The next day, according to Light, Edward Rose returned an additional $21,000 worth of merchandise to Cast-On Cottage. Laundon has chosen not to speak about the situation while her case against Rose is pending. Both Michaeleen and Edward Rose declined to comment for this story.

For expert advice on how to better protect your shop from the Audrey Yandels and Michaeleen Roses of the world, read the print version of “By Hook or By Crook” in the August issue of Yarn Market News. Be sure to check this site for updates on both women’s cases.