Simi Valley business owner Jonathan Youssef raced to his modest jewelry and repair shop on Memorial Day morning, fearing the worst.
The business owner next door had called him just after 6 a.m. to say that burglars had broken into their coffee and candy store and also breached Youssef’s establishment, 5 Star Jewelry & Watch Repair.
His father and the shop’s founder, 71-year-old Jacoub Youssef, had already reached the store located inside a strip mall.
The safe appeared intact. Jacoub tried to reassure his just-arriving son — and perhaps himself: “They didn’t open the safe.”
But Jonathan wasn’t so sure.
“It was like a movie, like ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ or ‘The Italian Job,’” said Jonathan Youssef, the store’s co-owner. “I couldn’t believe it, but I told my dad to open the safe.”
The patriarch did so, only to find gold bullion, customer jewelry, decades of savings and other items missing.
“It was a lifetime’s worth of work — of struggle — gone, just gone,” Jonathan Youssef told The Times on Tuesday evening as he fought back tears. “Everything we owned and, worse, family heirlooms of our customers are gone. It’s unthinkable.”
Simi Valley police received a call at 6:33 a.m. from the Youssefs. Senior Officer Casey Nicholson said an unknown number of burglars gained access to Dr. Conkey’s Candy & Coffee shop next door through the roof.
Nicholson did not confirm how the burglars moved into the jewelry and repair shop, noting that the crime was still under investigation. Surveillance footage provided to KTLA showed burglars crawling on the floor.
Jonathan Youssef said detectives told him the burglars spray-painted security cameras as they entered Dr. Conkey’s. They then spent about three hours cutting through both walls and about eight inches of his 5,000-pound safe. They cut a crate-sized hole and seized everything inside.
“They were no slouches, and this wasn’t their first rodeo,” Jonathan Youssef said of the burglars. “They knew where the cameras were, how to evade detection and what equipment to use to get into the safe.”
Jonathan Youssef estimated his store lost between $2 million and $2.5 million in personal inventory — gold bullion, silver bars, white gold and platinum pieces, cash, multiple high-end Rolex, TAG Heuer and Omega watches, center-stone diamond engagement rings and more.
“It was store merchandise and the accumulation of a lifetime’s worth of work for my dad,” Jonathan Youssef said. “He’s been devastated over the loss.”
Jonathan Youssef said his father had been “too distraught” to speak with the media. The elder Youssef emigrated to the United States from Egypt in the early 1970s as a 19-year-old.
He’s owned several other small businesses and handed over the jewelry store, which he opened 25 years earlier, to his son in 2015, Jonathan Youssef said.
They had just decided to reduce store hours as his father neared retirement; Jonathan had purchased a sign Monday reflecting the change.
“He was slowly dwindling his hours away from the store until his actual retirement at the end of the year,” Jonathan Youssef said.
But those plans are now in flux.
The younger Youssef said his store couldn’t afford to insure what was in their safe, so it’s a total loss. The only part that is covered by insurance is the damaged and ultimately ineffective safe, Jonathan Youssef said.
“My father doesn’t want to retire now,” the son said. “He wants to work to help recoup some of these losses.”
The younger Youssef estimates the store is in the red several hundred thousand dollars because of the loss of jewelry belonging to roughly 100 neighborhood customers. He said the store’s main business was not selling jewelry, but altering and repairing it.
“Those are the irreplaceable items that are difficult to accept,” Jonathan Youssef said. “I could care less about our inventory.”
Since news broke, customers have turned the store into a de facto memorial site, Jonathan Youssef said.
“I’ve had ladies coming here and crying about their stolen engagement rings or grandma’s diamond earrings,” he said. “There was a guy who screamed in my face about his wife’s wedding ring, and it just hurts. It’s rough.”
Kathi Van Etten, chief executive and president of the Simi Valley Chamber of Commerce, said the burglary shocked the neighborhood.
“It’s so hard because this is such a safe community and you don’t expect these types of things to happen,” she said. “And they did everything right, from having security and taking precautions.”
Van Etten said some chamber members had reached out to her to ask how they could help. She said some were planning to bring meals to the Youssefs.
“This is the type of community where people stick together and help each other,” Van Etten said.
The younger Youssef said he’d been sustained by community members who had delivered well wishes and hugs since shortly after the burglary.
One of his top customers created an online fundraising campaign, hoping to raise $20,000 to help defray some of the losses. The fund has nearly hit $18,000 as of Wednesday afternoon.
“My family is grateful to Simi Valley, to our community, for everything,” he said. “We have an obligation to this community, and we’re not going to rest until everyone who lost something is compensated.”
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