Goodwill seeks more help in fighting thefts

Monday, July 8, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Milli Clark, longtime director of the Las Vegas chapter of Goodwill Industries, would like to spend more of her time talking to groups about the good her organization has done training the disabled.

She would like to talk more about the disadvantaged families the organization has helped at Christmas and throughout the year since it was established here in 1973.

Instead, Clark spends a lot of time these days -- and, really, for the past four years -- talking to police about the more than 100 burglaries and other acts of vandalism at her thrift stores, warehouse and offices. She also talks to the media a lot about the crimes in an attempt to catch the wrongdoers.

"People think that just because we are handicapped, we are weak -- but we are not," said Clark, who is disabled and has a disabled son who went through the Goodwill training program and now is studying to become an electrical engineer.

"No matter how many times they break in, we will fight back. It only makes us stronger in our resolve."

It's that fighting spirit that inspired a group of local businessmen to get together to launch "Operation Protection" late last month to help Goodwill, the main office of which is at Boulder Highway and East Sahara Avenue. That facility, along with the retail outlet at 2560 Duneville St., has been the site of several recent break-ins.

"In the 30 years I've been here I haven't seen anything like this -- imagine, people robbing the Goodwill," said Mike Henle, operator of The Idea Co. public relations firm.

"Fran (Minnozzi, local distributor of Rolladen Rolling Shutters) is one of my clients, so I talked with her about installing the (metal) shutters at the Goodwill (on Duneville)."

Minnozzi, as part of the campaign, will provide free labor and installation once Goodwill raises $25,000 to cover the cost of materials for the German-made product, which manufacturers boast has never been breached by vandals and thieves.

Robert Cohen, a Las Vegas entrepreneur whose businesses include the Center Strip Inn, donated the first $1,000 to the fund-raising campaign for the shutters.

"For a while we were getting hit at Duneville every Thursday," Clark said. "It got to the point I dreaded going to sleep Thursday nights knowing I'd get the call that we'd been robbed again and I'd have to go there, check what was taken and wait for someone to come out in the middle of the night to secure the broken windows."

It was not the routine Clark expected when she took the job 10 years ago.

"I want to speak to organizations and tell them who we are and what we do to help the handicapped," she said, noting that the shutter offer comes on the heels of a donation of surveillance cameras and other security equipment at the Duneville store, a block east of Jones Boulevard off West Sahara. "Instead, I am doing more of this."

Clark believes the organization can raise much of the money for the shutters through private donations.

"I'll take a dollar or two here and there -- anything I can get, " Clark said, acknowledging that longtime donors probably will consider this request as part of their annual donations, meaning she will have to make up funds for projects elsewhere.

"That may very well happen, but it's a chance I will have to take so that we can become better secured," she said.

Henle suggested that local real estate agents could help Goodwill obtain the funds to purchase the shutters.

He said Minnozzi, who recently helped get the shutters installed at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church after it was hit with a rash of break-ins, is ready to place the order at a moment's notice to have the materials shipped from Europe.

In recent years, Goodwill has overcome crimes including:

* $10,000 worth of donated goods being stolen at a loading dock during a 1992 pre-Christmas burglary from Goodwill trucks that now are parked inside a warehouse -- the location of which she will not reveal.

* Thieves making off with thousands of dollars in office equipment and goods stolen from offices and retail outlets.

* An office worker being pistol whipped by an assailant.

* A thrift store clerk being robbed by a thief on in-line skates, who darted into the building, snatched the cash from the register and zipped out without being identified.

* Company trucks being stolen from fenced-in warehouse yards and taken on joy rides through the desert.

Donations can be made by calling the Goodwill at 431-2020.