By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

It is my sad duty to report that mango thieves are making life miserable for Debbie on Diamond Head. (She asked that her last name be withheld to avoid reprisal.) On Thursday at 8:50 a.m. voices outside her bedroom window woke her from a sound sleep.

Her bedroom window is under a Hayden mango tree, a few branches of which hang over a low rock wall and the sidewalk on Diamond Head Road. A young woman was on the sidewalk trying to reach high enough to pick a green mango.

"What are you doing?" Debbie inquired suspiciously.

"I'm trying to pick a mango."

"Those are my mangoes."

"You've got so many. Can't I have one?"

Debbie said the young woman's tone was so sassy that it irritated her. She told the mango picker to swipe somebody else's mangoes. But that wasn't the worst. The woman went back into a Hawaiian Island Eco-Tours bus and drove off.

"Can you imagine stopping on eco tours to take mangoes from somebody's yard?" Debbie asked.

She said she promptly called the Better Business Bureau. They were very helpful although the person on the line confessed that mango snatching is out of their line. They are more familiar with misrepresentation of merchandise. They gave her several numbers to call.

One of them was for a state consumers' center. This person had nothing to offer except to try calling 911.

"I didn't think it was an emergency so I called another number," Debbie continued. A kind police officer explained that mangoes hanging over the sidewalk are public property. But those hanging inside her yard belong to her.

Debbie said she called the tour company but the president wasn't in. At this writing, he hasn't returned her call. She said she was born and grew up in Hawai'i and has lived in the house on Diamond Head Road since 1968.

"I have a Hayden and a Pierie mango tree in my yard," she said. "I love mangoes. Some years are junk. In good years, the mangoes I don't eat I give away to friends and relatives. I don't let mangoes lie in my yard. Over the years, lots of my mangoes have been stolen."

Once she caught a mango thief climbing her tree. Joggers reach over her low rock wall to snatch mangoes. People with long mango pickers come around. When the Waikiki Trolley goes by she can hear the Japanese tourists exclaim, "Ohhhhh, mangoes."

"An elderly lady who doesn't get around very well lives next door," Debbie said. "She has a mango tree in her yard. Last year, people came in and stripped the tree. It wasn't the first time. I felt sorry for her so I gave her some of my mangoes. Once, she surprised a mango thief in her yard and scared him away. He left his mango picker behind."

A Honolulu Police Department representative said one arrest has been made for stealing mangoes this year. That was from a grove in Pearl City. More than $100 worth were taken.