Boxed In : Auto Body Shop Workers Shut the Doors on Would-Be Radio Thief

FOUNTAIN VALLEY — Tom Coleman and his friends took the law into their own hands Thursday, and it worked.

Coleman, 28, was at work at Campbell Paint and Body when co-worker Gilbert Orozco, 41, spotted someone poking around in Coleman’s prized blue 1986 Toyota pickup truck.

“I said, ‘Hey, Tom, looks like somebody’s stealing your car,’ and we ran out there,” Orozco said. He, Coleman and four other employees sprinted across the street, surrounded the truck and held the doors shut, sealing the intruder inside. Another co-worker called police.

Coleman said the 10 or 15 minutes they all stood there, their hands holding the truck’s hot doors closed, looking at each other and praying for the police, felt like an eternity.

“It was exciting but it seemed like forever,” he said.

Larry Turner won’t soon forget the sight.

“It was like 120 degrees outside and he was trapped in there, sweating and begging us to let him go,” Turner recalled. “He was desperate. He kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again, I promise,’ and we were saying, ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ ” Turner said they didn’t stop to worry about whether the man had a weapon.

“We’re all big, hulking, body men around here so it didn’t seem like a big problem,” he said with a chuckle. “And besides if he was so smart then he wouldn’t have gotten caught in a car.”

They planned to run, Coleman quipped, if anybody saw a gun.

“But it’s not like we had any idea what we were doing. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened,” he said. “We’re not trained or anything; we just reacted well.”

A 17-year-old from Santa Ana was being held at Orange County Juvenile Hall in the incident after being arrested by police on suspicion of car theft. Police Sgt. Dann Bean said the teen-ager was trying to steal Coleman’s $1,100 car stereo.

“It was the weirdest thing,” said Coleman, who lives in Costa Mesa. “I mean what kind of robber tries to nab a car from an auto body shop?”

Orozco, an Orange resident, remained low-key about his derring-do.

“It was no big deal. I’ve worked here for five years, and we all watch out for each other,” he said.

After the excitement died down, Coleman learned that just before the incident, the suspect had been in the shop asking about a job.

“They told him he had to fill out an application and he just walked away,” Coleman said. “Guess he found another line of work.”

But Coleman said he still can’t believe that a thief would draw so much attention to himself.

“It was right in front of our eyes,” he said. “I mean, it’s our job to watch out for cars, especially our own.”

Bean called the case one in a million. But he warned that crime-fighting is best left to police.

“In this case, everything worked out fine. But you never know what a suspect will do. They might have a gun or a knife, they might be on drugs,” he said. “Don’t try to be a hero. That’s our job.”