A few thoughts

This is the first time I have been confronted with a problem like this. Never having been in any kind of trouble with the law, dealing with the legal system and most of all my reputation and livelihood are at stake makes this a bit overwhelming. I wanted to learn about blogging but would have liked to do it under other circumstances. Please take the time to scroll down to the bottom of this posting to the start of this nightmare, post any comments you might have and send a message to the Goodwill telling them that this has gotten way out of control.

My feelings about how Goodwill could have handled this are simple. If they saw something going on that warranted attention then they should deal with it. In this case they did. As long as I have been a customer of the Goodwill stores and never having any problems with them in the past I would like to think they could have dealt with the incident in a different way. Considering the amount of money I have spent in their stores, I'm not some flake off of the street going in there pocketing merchandise. They could have confronted me and asked if I planned to pay for the items I had in my cart rather then have me arrested, humiliated and banned from their stores. That would have made things allot easier and if they suspected wrongdoing then put me on notice, not have me hauled out of the store in cuffs. It was extreme to say the least. No doubt I put the items in my cart. I'm guilty of that. I have done that everyday for many years. The difference this time was I forgot to put them back on the shelf. These items were junk. I should not have even bothered to pick them up in the first place. The gathering thing comes from what I call Bin mentality, grabbing anything shiny and squirling it away to examine later. Anybody that has shopped at the Goodwill outlet stores (The Bins) should understand this mentality. They roll out large tables of stuff to the waiting crowds. Once the table stops it's a free-for-all. You must grab something or you feel like your missing out. Once you have gathered then you sort out what you want and toss the rest back into the bin. It's an interesting way to shop but gets a bit brutal at times.

The letter

I wrote a letter to Micheal Miller, president and CEO of the Portland-area Goodwill Industries, Wednesday August 5th asking for his help looking into this problem. I introduced my myself, explained what I do, told him a little about my purchase and donation history with Goodwill and then went into the chain of events that took place. To save repeating the same information I'm posting a few paragraphs from the letter rather than the whole thing;

Since my full time job ended four years ago, I decided to pursue my love of junk collecting by shopping for resalable items to sell through the Internet. In these four years I have made considerable progress in building a small online business that helps to support myself. Unfortunately, I have accumulated more then I have sold, but that’s a whole other story and probably very common amongst Goodwill addicts. Goodwill has been a major part of my life the last four years - almost too much at times as it seems I have no life outside of Goodwill or church. I visit your stores every day and make purchases but mainly shop your Outlet store in Milwaukee. In the last four years I have spent over $47,000 in your stores. Donated countless loads of items of which I have seen many sell in your stores such as a player piano which sold for $499.00 at the Super Store and an antique couch that brought in $225.00 at the Outlet Store. I am known as the guy with the dog throughout your stores as I carry a small Pug with me at all times. The dog has been called the “Goodwill Ambassador” by some of your employees. He is my best friend and well loved by your customers and many of your employees.


I have no problem with Sean doing his job in apprehending me; I do, however, have a problem with how this is turning out. I have to go to court and prove my innocence, incur expense for a lawyer and court costs - not to mention the embarrassment and humiliation I have suffered. In the police report Sean says “He and other employees saw me place several items that he had selected from the display shelves underneath the dogs blanket” I have a hard time with this because they’re stating something that did not happen. I’m a pretty big person and it would take x-ray vision to see through or around my fat body. I did place the items in the cart but did not place them underneath the blanket as they have stated. I accept responsibility for my stupidity and not paying attention to the items placed in my cart. It was not intentional, just an oversight due to being tired. I think what I have gone through so far is more than enough punishment. A night at the Multnomah County Jail is something one will never forget.

It would have been nice if Sean could have worked this out in the store without having me arrested. I would like to think that my long term patronage to your stores would count for something. I made a mistake. I think back to some of the mistakes Goodwill has made to me over the years and I have to hope that Goodwill and I can work this out without having to go through the courts and incurring wasted time and expense, which I can’t afford. I just want to keep shopping at your stores and put this unfortunate incident behind me.

I would appreciate your looking into this situation and responding to me; my reputation and livelihood are at stake.

Thank you for your consideration.


Time will tell if Mr. Miller will take the time to look into this and respond. My hope is that he will and see that this was an unintentional oversight on my part that has been blown way out of control and resolve it. Any input from you, the reader, of this would be appreciated. The Goodwill contact emails are Sylvia Schmidt, assistant to Michael Miller, sschmidt@gicw.org . Dale Emanuel, Public Relations Representative, demanul@gicw.org .

The police report

After meeting with the lawyer and not feeling good about my options I went to the courthouse to request the police report as he requested I do. $5.00 and day wait I got it and it said basically what the lawyer said it would. Subject observed by Goodwill security and goodwill employees selecting and hiding items underneath the dogs blanket. How they saw this is a mystery to me as it did not happen. They may have seen me set the items on the blanket to research but could not have seen me place them under the blanket. Nonsense!! I talked to the lawyer about it and he explained that I could subpoena the witnesses but since Goodwill is a private company they could make it difficult for me to get their statements. Again, additional paperwork, court costs and something I do not fully understand in addition to not being able to afford to pay someone who does. The night before I saw the lawyer I wrote a letter to Michael Miller, CEO of Goodwill Industries, explaining my dilemma and asking him to look into it.

The lawyer

I figured I had better consult a lawyer to see what my options are. The following Monday I talked with one that gave me some interesting info and said it would cost about $3000.00. He then realized that the charge had been reduced to a violation and said that he did not handle violation cases and that finished our business. I had talked to a friend of mine who referred me to a lawyer whom I met on Tuesday for a consultation. He charged me $50.00 and spent 1 1/2 hours with me and explained my options. He definitely knew his business. He informed me that the reduction in charges to a violations was really no favor. With this I lost the right to a jury trial, court appointed representation and the trial outcome would be determined by the preponderance of evidence rather then beyond a reasonable doubt. This was not good. If any of you have been to traffic court then you know about the preponderance of evidence scenario. Cop goes up says you did it, you go up and say did not. Judge says guilty. In this case Goodwill security says I did so I have prove I did not. Pretty hard when the goods were in my cart. In Oregon apparently they have to show that I Intended to steal and should have to show that I selected the items and placed them under the dog blanket and knowingly left the store with the items concealed. This is all very difficult due the fact that all I have is my testimony and with the judge deciding the case on the preponderance of evidence I'm taking a big gamble. The lawyer said the easiest least expensive thing to do would be get the case put back into community court and plead guilty but said that we should look at the police report to see what Goodwill has on me. He figured it would basically say, suspect observed stealing, suspect appended. He also said he could handle the case for about $2500.00 or I could defend myself and offered to help me with portions of preparation for a lesser amount. He was very fair and I felt comfortable with his advise. I'm in a tough spot here not wanting to give in to this. I also can't afford the cost that I will incur to defend myself. There is also the fines and court costs in going to trial that I could get stuck with.

The first court appearance

After getting out of the jail at 4:30am I walked back to my car to go kill some time before I could go pick up Gonzo. I had a 1:30pm court time for the arraignment. I arrived a little early for the hearing to checking and the lady at the window told me that my misdemeanor charge had been reduced to a violation and I would be going to Community Court. She was very happy to inform of this but she didn't say congratulations. I thought great, maybe this will make it easier. The courtroom was filling up with judge trying to get things in order. I learned real fast. Don't have your cell phone on in his courtroom. Several people did and he was not happy. One man mouthed off and he was literally thrown through the doors by three deputies. He came back in a few minutes later bleeding all over the place and got 48 hours of jail for his comment. He then muttered something else and got a bonus of 24 additional hours. Needless to say I practiced eyes down, mouth shut. I had Gonzo with me and the judge took note and made a comment so I held him up for him to see him. Thank god he did not have a problem with him. Gonzo behaved the whole time in there. I think he could feel the intensity of the situation. Most of the people in there where doing the second part of their process. The first trip if you plead guilty you get community service. When you come back you show you have completed your community service and the charge is dismissed. You also, in some cases, can get the charges expunged from your record. The judge was a bit interesting but I think he was genuinely interested in helping people. I saw him really trying to help some of the folks in there.

My turn came up an I had a choice of guilty or not guilty. The guilty plea would have been easier but I could not do it as what I did was not intentional. When the judge asked me how I wanted to plea I told him I was not sure. He told me that he could give me a week to think about it and I told him there was an issue with the dollar amount of items I was charged with stealing. He said something really fast I could not understand and entered me as not guilty and had the clerk schedule a trial date. That was it, I left but noticed after I left the courthouse the clerk had entered the court date as a Saturday. I had to go through the screening process and go back up the courtroom to get it fixed. What a pain, but interesting.

The jail experience

Arrived at the Multnomah County Jail to be booked around 11:00pm. How many times I had been outside of the jail shooting pictures of bad guys in the past. I have to admit it was interesting. I had just seen a program on the National Geographic channel that showed this place. Little did I know I would be visiting it weeks later. The people there were OK. Several deputies were standing behind me putting on rubber gloves. I looked back and told them that they were making me nervous. They assured me I would be OK. I think they knew it was my first time there. They had a little sense of humor and searched me, with my clothes on, took my picture and finger printed me. I then got to go sit and watch TV with a bunch of other bad people. There were some beauties too. One guy who kept making horse sounds ended up getting hauled off to an isolation cell kicking and screaming. They had women in there too that were on the other side of a short wall. A couple of the women would not shut up either and ended up in isolation cells next to the horse man. They also went kicking and screaming. One of them did not shut up the rest of the night. The guards would not put up with any shit. I made sure to keep my eyes down and mouth shut. Five hours later I was released. As interesting as it was, I don't want to go back.

The begining of a mess

My story begins with events that took place a week ago at the Goodwill Superstore on Sixth Ave. in Portland, OR. The day was hot but a little cooler then the days prior as we were winding down from a week-long heat wave. I was doing what I have done everyday for the last four years unless I am lucky enough to get some photo work, Picking through stuff at the Goodwill Outlet store in Milwaukee. It was an OK day for stuff. Got a nice dry mount press and the usual variety of small electronic junk and notably a small satellite remote for my car satellite radio, more about that later. Took a break in the middle of the day to do some food deliveries for the St. Vincent De Paul. Goodwill has been very good about holding my cart of stuff while I take a break to do these deliveries. I came back and finished the eight hour day of picking to head to the next stop, The Superstore on 6th.

I arrived at the Superstore and as usual grabbed a cart and placed my dog Gonzo in the cart ontop of a blanket I put in the child seat area. Gonzo goes with me pretty much everywhere. He's a good dog and my best friend

So now the dog is in the cart and I'm ready to find some deals. I went in, checked the showcase and proceeded to the back of the store to check the shelves. Nothing much but a broken digital camera and a power supply with a network card attached to it. I set them in the cart next to the dog and moved through the aisles and did not see much else and looked over the camera and found it was not worth anything, it was missing the battery cover, and the same for the power supply. I Set them back in the cart next to the dog to place them back where I had found them and moved around for the a second pass to catch anything I might have missed. I found a USB digital scale scale that was kind of interesting. After looking it up on my data phone and checking it out I figured I would get it. I put it in the cart and headed up to the front to pay and go home. It had been a long day and I was tired.

I paid for the scale and headed out the door. A few moments later somebody called my attention and I turned around to see a man holding a badge stating he was Goodwill security and wanted to talk about the things in my cart under the dog. I realized at that moment that I had not set the camera and power supply back on the shelf. I pulled the items out from the cart, they were sitting between the blanket and the blue plastic flap on the back of the child seat. The guy escorted me to the back of the store into a small room and asked me what was going on. I told him I just wasn't paying attention and forgot to set them back on the shelf. He said he did not believe me and that he had been observing me. I really didn't know what to say except that I just forgot to set them back. He proceeded to separate the power supply and network card because he said they did not look like they went together. He then sent the network card out to be priced as it did not have any sticker on it. It came back $19.99. I disputed this as they were bundled together. His response was that Goodwill would not sell something like that together. I had to scoff at that as this happens all the time at Goodwill. Half the time they don't even know what they are pricing so they just put some ridiculous price on it in order to keep their production numbers up. That's a whole other story that should be written. He wanted to know how much money I had on me. I did not know how much I had and told him if he wanted to know he could count and I slid my wallet and pocket of papers over to him to count. He then asked me to sign some paperwork stating the items in question and basically an admission of willfull theft, a trespassing notice banning me from all Goodwill stores and another paper that had some civil penalty information on it. I looked over the papers and told him I was uncomfortable with them because of the list of items was inaccurate and by signing I would be admitting guilt to willfull theft. I told him I could not sign them. I tried to take a picture of the items in question and the forms but he got upset with me saying Goodwill has a no photo policy. I laughed at that and asked if he was going to provide me of copy of these forms and he said no. I tried again to photo them and he tried to cover my phone and told me he was going to take it away. I then figured I had better start writing some notes on what was going on and asked for a sheet of paper to write on. He refused me due to my lack of co-operation. I was able to find enough paper in my wallet to document the series of events. It was getting kind of ridiculous at this point. He left the room I guess to call the police and they arrived a bit later. He also said he needed to take a photograph of me which I made the comment " but Goodwill has a no photo policy" and told him good luck. He did not get the photo.

The police arrived and arrested me. The officer asked me what happened and I told him. He then asked me if I had any weapons on my person. I told him just a small leatherman tool. He ask to go through my items to count my money. When doing this I emptied my pockets and had three sets of keys, cell phone charger, headphones, a couple of batteries, lots of papers and the satellite radio remote. He looked a the remote and ask the Goodwill guy if it was theirs and he said it was because it had a sticker on it with a two day old date. I told him that it came from the outlet store I had been at most of the day. Goodwill guy said he did not believe me as Goodwill does not ship items to the outlet for at least three weeks. I told him that they get things down at the outlet with dates sometime within a day and that I probably had something else in my van that could show him that. He blew that off and the officer then said that the $2.99 price tag on the remote would change the charge from third degree theft to second degree theft because the value of the items had gone over $50.00. I disputed that and pointed out that the Goodwill guy had separated two items earlier and put a $19.99 on the unmarked item. He basically was using the price sticker against me on my remote but not considering the lack of a price sticker on the network card. The officer noted my frustration with this and decided to confiscate all the items in question as evidence. We then left the store with me in cuffs.

The police officer was very nice, He tried to see if I could just be cited and released rather than taken downtown to jail because I had Gonzo with me. He could not get an OK on that so he let me call someone to come pick up Gonzo so he would not have to go to the pound. I was very thankful for that. The officer waited for my friend to show up and then took me to jail. He was very professional, not judgemental and just nice. I wish all police officers were like this guy.