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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, October 8, 2001

Lawn statues, owners reunited at police station

By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

There were no plastic saints or pink flamingos yesterday among the police department's showing of stolen lawn ornaments.

Police recovered about 500 pieces of lawn statuary that had been stolen from East Honolulu homes.

Advertiser library photo • Oct. 3, 2001

There were ceramic elephants and brass fu dogs and a set of three matching lawn jockeys.

There were graceful cranes and a fish designed to spout streams of water from a koi pool; and fat, smiling Buddhas squatting among dainty dancing girls.

But there wasn't much there worth less than a grand, and most of the items on display at the Beretania police station yesterday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. were worth several thousand dollars.

"They were collectors," Detective Howard Ishida said of the people responsible for stealing more than 500 lawn ornaments, valued at more than $100,000, from homes in Nu'uanu, Manoa, Diamond Head, Kahala and elsewhere. "These are works of art."

At about 1 p.m., Ishida was starting to wonder where the owners of some of the pieces were. Although 34 people had come in to claim more than 80 pieces of property and had smiled happily for the police officers who snapped their pictures, the bulk of the collection still sat in a roped-off area of the police garage, waiting to be claimed.

"This represents a lot of work," Ishida said. "We advertised."

But Ishida had barely started to worry over the unclaimed property when a second wave of people swept in, just before the 2 p.m. bell.

Judy Kim of Portlock had seen the curved fish tails of her brass table base in a picture of the stolen ornaments. Kiku Matsumoto of Kahala was happy to find one of her koi pool fountain fish, even though its twin was not in the police cache.

Annalise and Larry Vogel were overjoyed to find the two brass fu dogs they'd bought in Bangkok.

"Oh, this is so exciting!" Annalise Vogel said. She leaned over to hug the dogs as one of the officers snapped her picture with her $3,000 worth of lawn ornaments. The dogs had been missing for a year, the Vogels said.

Police Lt. Sherman Chan said the ornaments that remained unclaimed yesterday afternoon will be kept by the police department for another six months, then sold at auction.

Police have charged David Lorimer with second-degree theft in the case of the missing lawn ornaments. Lorimer is suspected of sneaking onto properties at night, snatching the items and selling them to a Hawai'i Kai collector.

The Hawai'i Kai man was arrested on suspicion of detaining stolen property, but released pending further investigation.

The stolen items were collected by police who executed search warrants at the Hawai'i Kai man's home on Hakalau Place and at an Iwilei storage container.