HONOLULU (KHON2) — A number of incidents over the weekend have left small businesses picking up the pieces as hard times were made even tougher by vandalism and theft.
One business that KHON2 spoke with had good news as a binder containing $4,000 worth of “One Piece” collectable cards was returned after a man was caught on surveillance video walking out with it two days prior.
That video received 160,000 views on Instagram in just under 24 hours.
Managers did not want to appear on camera but said their store was the third card shop in Honolulu to be hit in less than a week.
“I don’t know what to really say, but I’m glad that people are out there and I’m glad the people think about it and somehow even the person who had this binder was willing to bring it back to us,” a Toy Lynx manager told KHON2. “Just last week, a card game store got smashed and grabbed at night … and then a few days later, another store got smashed and grabbed. And they took a whole bunch of products. And you know we feel for those stores.”
The Valley Health Bar on Kinau Street was also hit by vandals over the weekend. Someone broke their front window.
“Junk because you know small little mom and pops, everybody taking cracks right, so this kind of stuff makes it little bit tougher,” said Waikoloa Noa, owner of The Valley Health Bar.
Fortunately, Noa said only the window was damaged. But that’ll probably cost several thousand dollars to replace.
As for Toy Lynx, they’re going to adjust some security procedures. They also have more display cases on the way to showcase their high value cards, instead of just having them in an unsecured binder.
“You might be in a bad situation, you might be having bad karma coming around but you need to continue doing good karma and you need to continue doing good things to kind of build your way out of it,” said a Toy Lynx manager. “And I’m glad that there are people that can make this change and go in the right direction.”