Post #131010 by TIKIBOSKO on Tue, Dec 14, 2004 3:28 PM

Aloha all,

I’m not sure if this was covered previously but about 3-4 years ago a similar criminal was terrorizing Tiki owners near the same North San Diego County area. I have a couple of friends who lost Tikis to the bandit. Oddly enough this guy was also a meth addict, he would cruise around on his bike casing houses, if you caught him in your yard and asked whadda ya want, he’d cleverly come up with the old “looking for work” excuse. This guy would go anywhere to get a Tiki, front yard, back yard, where ever, he was a master Tiki thief. I have a customer in Leucadia who has a bunch of my carvings and she was terrified the monster would find her yard. Being a small coastal community my friends figured out who the guy was and did a reverse sting, they went to his mother’s house, where he stashed the goods and lived. Their Idols sat just over a fence (one was in a tree?) along with animal lawn ornaments, and gnomes, etc… They called authorities and later had to go down to the station and ID their Tikis, the cops where befuddled that “anyone can tell them apart they all look the same”.
Another of the carvings was taken to a local Tiki chop shop of sorts run by an unscrupulous Tiki salesperson, where they tried to disguise it by painting the teeth white and adding color to the humiliated God. Ironically the way the fiend got into heisting Tikis was by starting with garden Gnomes and the reflective yard balls! I think the lesson here is obvious.
I know it sounds too crazy to be true but it’s all fact, some of this mess was covered by the local paper. Fortunately I had the inside scoop where I got to hear all the sorted details and believe you me there is a lot more strangeness to this tale.

Mahalo

Bosko