Florence,Colorado: Getting Interviewed By KKTV News In Your Underwear?

Usually it's peaceful in Florence, Colorado--just the way I like it. But today a bit of a crime wave hit our fair burg.

This morning my husband was up early doing yard work and came in to inform me that he found a woman's Bible (in a pretty padded zip-up cover) and a tote filled with items that looked like they belonged to a woman. The items were thrown in our backyard.

My husband's first inclination was a neighbor got upset at someone and threw them over our fence. Since we know or at least are  acquainted  of all our neighbors, that didn't seem to fit. All the neighbors are quiet and calm. We're probably (OK, just me) the most rowdy people in the neighborhood.

My mind works a little more cynically. I suggested someone had been abducted or perhaps murdered. Yes, I read too many books. I told my husband to not touch the items anymore due to fingerprints in case these were crime items.

Turns out they were crime items, but thankfully not in the way I originally speculated.

We were on our way to Colorado Springs, but my husband wanted to stop by the police station to turn the items in. But as we were getting ready to leave I noticed a Florence Police car at the neighbors and told my husband I'd just run out and tell the officer we found some things in our backyard.

Apparently our neighbor had their min-van stolen. After I expressed my heartfelt sorrow for this loss I told the officer we had some items we were going to drop off and he saved us a trip. He asked what they were. I said we didn't look too closely due to fingerprints, but a Bible was among the items.

He said the lady who they were stolen from was going to be very happy about the Bible being found. Apparently the items were stolen from her car, a few blocks from our house. We were also told a helmet and a Kevlar vest was stolen from a Fremont County deputy sheriff's cruiser, not far from our house.

The items we recovered were spread out on a Florence Police cruiser and we waved at our neighbors and the Florence Police chief who had just arrived and drove onto the Springs.

We had no idea the crime wave extended past our street and a neighboring street. We were troubled by this local crime, literally in our backyard.

You see, Florence has a fairly low crime rate. I checked it out extensively before we moved here--coming from living decades in the Springs and then in Denver for a short time. Florence has virtually no violent crimes. Murders are rare. Years go by where there are no murders. Rapes, same thing. Assaults, also rare. Petty theft and such is more of a problem according to stats, but still fairly low. Illegal drugs and domestic assaults are problems, as they are most everywhere--but most people like me who check crime stats know that if you don't hang out in certain circles, that type of crime most likely won't affect one personally.

Florence is a Mayberry-type town. The kind of place where people leave their doors and cars unlocked sometimes.  But I've lived in high-crime areas in my adult years and was raised on the mean streets of New York.

Even with my more cynical mindset, I never expected to be on the edges of a crime wave in Florence.

So, on our drive today to the Springs we talked about getting an alarm system and securing our property even more. Even though we didn't have anything missing. Both our cars were unlocked, but nothing was missing. Of course, I had crap in my car that was destined for thrift store donation.

We just arrived back from the Springs, with this incident fresh on our minds, but more hungry and tired from our shopping trip. I was cutting some meat for dinner with some kitchen shears and I saw a man from the kitchen window who was walking up our driveway waving and smiling. At first I thought he was a religious person (wouldn't have minded) by the way he was dressed. But he had nothing in his hands. So I thought: Police detective.

No, reporter from KKTV, Channel 11 in Colorado Springs. He wanted to know what we knew about the car thefts. I came outside still with my kitchen shears in hand and told him what the police had told us and the stolen property in our backyard. He asked if we knew that two other people on our block had things stolen out of their cars. No, we didn't know that.

                                         My Husband And Spencer From KKTV Channel 11

He ran across the street to talk to another neighbor briefly and came back, so I invited him in the house to talk about the stolen property found in our backyard. My husband was cooking. Spencer Wilson, the reporter, asked if he could get an interview and I said sure, but let my husband do it since he's the one who found the items.

I looked at my husband to see if that was acceptable and he replied,"Well, I'll do it. But I'd at least like to put my pants on!"

Thankfully he was standing at the kitchen island and only I could see he was in his undies with a tank top. Spencer ran to get his camera and hubby ran to get his pants.

I think the interview would have been more entertaining in undies.

Spencer told us two vehicles had been taken from a construction site, but it probably wasn't related to what happened on our street and to another car and the deputy's cruiser a few blocks from us. We hadn't heard about the stolen construction vehicles, but were shocked so much crime happened in a few hours in a sleepy town that more concerns itself with antiques, festivals and parades and enjoying small town America.

We didn't get to talk to Spencer for too long since he was under deadline to get his story in tonight. I told him I understood, because years ago I volunteered to type closed captioning (for a competing news station in Colorado Springs) and sat right next to the editing station and saw the stress of editing stories under deadline. I also used to be under deadlines myself in print journalism, so I felt very sympathetic, but not so much that I didn't ask the extremely cordial Spencer if he'd pose for a blog picture.

What a good sport. Spencer is a true professional. He wasn't phased I came outside waving kitchen shears, or my husband cooked in his underwear and even took note that my husband was making a tomato, cucumber and onion salad that looked exactly like the one he made at home.

Spencer told us this was only his second day on the job. Of course, I cheered him on, even though it is not his first job in journalism. Basically I indicated encouragement and the knowledge he was going to go far in his career, without saying it outright since he was in a hurry. His last cheerful words as he zipped back to the studio were,"You have somebody at 11!"

Community journalism at its best.

And as a community of journalists, citizens and law enforcement--let's do our damnedest to find these criminals who think they can steal not only vehicles and things from vehicles, but our peace of mind.

Here's a link to the initial information when this story was just breaking from KKTV: http://www.kktv.com/content/news/Stolen-vehicles--444752653.html

This was when the information was vague. Tonight at 10 there will be more. Other TV stations had similar vague information, but was calling on the community to help find these criminals.

A stock photo of some of the items stolen from the deputy's cruiser was posted. It didn't occur to us, until Spencer posed the question that someone could use those items to impersonate law enforcement.

There are other details about this crime wave that will probably come out soon enough (from law enforcement and journalists) and the lesson will be we all need to be more vigilant in protecting ourselves from crime.

Confessions Of An Antiques Store Worker: Florence, Colorado

It's time to get out the figurative checkers and pickle barrel and feel the pulse of the town by working in ye olde antiques store in Florence, Colorado.

For those who don't know, Florence is the official antiques capital of Colorado and a burg of about 4,000 souls. We are off the beaten track, close to Highway 50, but not on it. We are accessible by Highways 67 and 115 and are over 20 miles from I-25. But people from all over the country and world, sometimes, manage to find the town. They don't come in droves usually, but at fast-enough clip to keep life and business interesting.

We moved here just a few years ago. We noticed real estate prices were way cheaper than Denver or Colorado Springs, where we owned homes. But that was to be expected since we are semi-isolated and the job market in Fremont County is decent, but nothing like the major metro areas along the Front Range.

We've had friends move here from a bigger Colorado city semi-recently and in helping them search online we noticed the real estate prices moving up.  We could not figure out why though. There have been no new major employers in the county. The economy here is decent with the rebuilding of the Royal Gorge Park (about 20 miles from Florence) but the economy is not exactly robust in Florence. Decent, but not robust.

We have friends who know a top real estate agent who sells in El Paso and Fremont counties and the agent reported the inventory is low in Fremont County and prices are rising.

Why? There was even a minor newspaper story about it, quoting local real estate agents noticing this and an influx of people, but the agents couldn't nail down exactly why  in order to establish a definitive pattern.

Well, all you have to do is hang out in ye olde antiques store to find out a reasonable theory.

A person came in the shop and knows a real estate agent who has been flooded with people moving in from a certain section of Colorado. I won't mention which section, since it's not my intent to give any area a bad rap.

I asked why people were flooding into Florence and buying houses when the job market here is what one would expect in a small town with few chain stores and very little industry except the prisons and small agricultural and related businesses.

The person replied that the area they are escaping from has went to pot--literally no pun intended. The illegal part of it. Illegal grows. And generally not from local people. The person said Cubans are often the ones bringing the illegal marijuana grows in.

I generally don't believe everything I hear. But this is the third time I have heard that. I heard it from an electrician. I had never thought of it before, but electricians and plumbers, etc. are generally all over, doing jobs and seeing what it happening in the real world.

And this area, folks are apparently escaping to Florence from, also has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the country.

And I know drugs (not marijuana only) are a problem in that Colorado town. I was in the town in question, actually buying antiques and saw it for myself. A friend had remembered from years back that she knew a neighborhood that had several antiques and junk stores all in a row. I was not familiar with the town much or the area. But we could only find one store that she vaguely remembered from years back.

I asked the store worker where all the other stores where, my friend remembered. She said that was years ago and the drugs were so bad that all the shop owners became scared and moved or went out of business.

I asked the obvious question: Where are the police?

"What police? There aren't enough police in this town," she replied.

As we left the store with our purchases, we were approached by a person who looked like a drug addict who insisted on helping us load our vehicle despite our saying, no thanks. He insisted and I gave him the few dollars I knew he wanted and so he would leave us alone, which he did.

Not a horrible experience, since the guy was respectful. But not a fun shopping experience that would draw most people to a town or neighborhood. And my and my friend are small town at heart, but perhaps are a bit more streetwise than some people since we've lived in some challenging areas all across the country.

I was told by the person who came into the shop I work in Florence, that people are coming in droves from this certain town, overtaken in part by drugs and also another town in Colorado that isn't quite as drug conflicted, but getting there.

At least now we know why real estate prices are rising in Florence and why we do run into so many transplants. And I understand. We all want small town America. We all want those conveniences and culture of the bigger cities, but we also want that small town security where we know our neighbors and can live relatively crime-free because the town is small enough so we can see what is going on.

Not that long ago, as we were moving here, and I was noticing the ridiculously low prices on nice homes in Fremont County, I asked our real estate agent why it was so. I was almost like a kid in a candy shop, finally able to afford a house I could never dream of in most other Colorado towns.

He told me that most people (usually employed by the prisons) chose to commute to Florence and Fremont County from larger towns, so there were plenty of houses available here. I asked why.

"They want the "lifestyle" in those larger towns and they don't want the lifestyle here," he said.

And now a few short years later, many people don't want the lifestyle in those same cities and are driving up the prices to get the lifestyle here.