A Minneapolis restaurant was working arduous to beautify the neighborhood with flowers.
A flower thief was working more durable.
For weeks, pissed off employees at El Sazon Cocina & Tragos had watched surveillance footage of what seems to be a well-dressed girl tip-toeing round their patio at Lyndale Avenue South to pilfer posies at nighttime.
Many times, cameras captured her heading to the identical nook, to the identical planter, to hold off one of many six engaging flower preparations that ring the outside seating space. Later, the cameras caught her carrying off the substitute flowers. And the substitute flower replacements.
“I do not imply to snicker, as a result of it is sort of upsetting, but it surely’s additionally ridiculous,” mentioned Karen de Leon, who co-owns the restaurant together with her husband Cristian. “A flower is just not going to interrupt us, but it surely’s annoying.”
Ultimately, the restaurant posted an enchantment for assistance on social media earlier than El Sazon’s plant substitute funds begins reducing into its delicious taco funds.
“Any concepts on the way to cease her???” they requested.
El Sazon’s many followers had many concepts. Stakeouts. Booby traps. Burying AirTags within the pots to trace them down later. As a substitute of backyard gnomes, somebody urged the restaurant might place pictures of the girl from the surveillance tapes within the flower beds.
In the long run, the perfect suggestion got here from their pleasant neighborhood florists. Bachman’s on Lyndale dropped off a present card to assist cowl the price of a substitute for the substitute for the substitute flowers — together with a suggestion: Subsequent time, “possibly attempt a cactus planter.”
“They do such a gorgeous job of beautifying the neighborhood,” mentioned Bachman’s CEO Susan Bachman-West. “From one household enterprise to a different household enterprise, we simply thought it will be good to assist them and proceed to assist them to beautify the neighborhood.”
Optimistically, El Sazon’s flowers will bloom the place they had been planted to any extent further. The thriller determine, in her heels and distinctive denim jacket, has not reappeared on the safety cameras since information of the thefts broke. El Sazon’s patio is in full bloom.
“Now,” de Leon mentioned, “we’re simply hoping for good climate.”
Our summers are brief. Patio season is fleeting. Stealing flowers from a Minnesotan appears notably unkind.