At about 3 a.m. on December 22, Rumors co-founder Casey Longyear was awakened by a call from her boutique’s security company. Someone had broken into their Durham location.
When she logged into their security camera account, she found that a man had broken through the door of the University Drive thrift store and was wandering around the showroom. Rumors, which Longyear and Marshé Wyche founded in 2007, has three locations. This was the third time this location had been broken into, but this time, something was different.
“He looked really calm,” Longyear says. “It didn’t look like he was looking for anything.”
This intruder wasn’t wearing a mask. He didn’t head for the register or the valuable items. Instead, he laid down under one of the racks as if he was going to sleep despite the alarm blaring around him. According to Molly Schonert, the store manager, the police arrived after about 10 minutes to arrest the man.
“They pretty much thought that, well, he probably wanted that to happen because it was so cold outside. He wanted to be able to go to jail for warmth and probably food,” Schonert says. It was 29 degrees that morning, one of the first cold nights of the year.
Despite being out of town in Greensboro, Schonert was on the way. After about an hour of driving, she spoke to the police, then got to work cleaning up the broken glass and patching up the door with cardboard.
By opening time at noon, Rumors was back up and running—if a little cold. The next day, the shattered door was boarded up, its front decorated by Lydia Williams, one of the store’s employees. According to Schonert, the glass door won’t be replaced until the new year in case of another break-in over the holiday season, a particularly desperate time for many.
The $1,500 for a new door is no small expense for the business, but customers’ suggestions for a crowdsourcing drive have gone unanswered. Instead, the store’s owners hope its fans will shop at the store or buy gift cards for themselves or loved ones.
“I don’t really want to crowdsource for something like this when there’s so many other people in need, especially at this time of year,” Longyear says.
As unfortunate as the incident was for Rumors, owner and manager alike agree that the real misfortune is with the man who sought shelter in the store.
“I hope that Durham can take note of this,” Longyear says. “It’s inspiring me to try to figure out what we can do to show the houseless community that we’re here for them.”
In the past, Rumors has engaged in several charity events, including donations and collaborations with groups like Food Not Bombs and community fridges. When Longyear heard about a community member who had lost everything in a house fire or escaped domestic violence, she put store credit in the system for them. At one point, Rumors donated tens of thousands per year, according to Longyear, but this is no longer possible with their current finances. Nothing is set in stone yet, but she says the Rumors team is considering options like bringing a free rack of jackets downtown to offer the unhoused some much-needed warmth.
Schonert only wishes that they had been able to offer the man help before he took such drastic measures.
“Next time, feel free to call us or just know that it’s a safe space, that we would happily have given him a jacket off the store floor,” Schonert says. “Because we have done that in the past when we’ve had people come that are houseless, asking if we had any clothes. I’m happy to do that for people in need, because that’s what we’re all about—community.”
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