TACOMA, Wash. — A Tacoma business was burglarized on Christmas Day and the owners estimate the thieves stole approximately $300,000 worth of merchandise.
The owner of Bellevue Rare Coins in Tacoma said the burglary was an organized operation and believes it could have been an inside job.
"My reaction is physically ill. I mean, I cannot come compare that feeling to any feeling I've ever had," said Eric Hoolahan, the CEO of Bellevue Rare Coins.
Hoolahan said the burglary started early Christmas morning. Thieves got into Bellevue Rare Coins by breaking into a vacant building next door and cutting a hole through the shared wall.
"They must have used sledgehammers, pickaxes, to break through the cinderblock, and then they used hand saws to cut the drywall," Hoolahan said.
Hoolahan said a motion sensor alarm went off around 6 a.m. He checked the cameras and didn't see anything. He said the Tacoma Police Department even responded to an alarm, but didn't see anything either.
He said he believes the suspects used something to block the motion sensor and must have know the layout to avoid being detected going in and out.
"It made me think that there was just a malfunction in the in the sensor, they never actually came all the way into the building where the camera would have picked them up because the camera faces away from the wall that they came through," Hoolahan said.
Hoolahan said he believes there are six suspects who swiped merchandise from a blue cage. He initially thought $50,000 worth of merchandise was stolen, but now estimates the total to be approximately $300,000.
"It has to be somebody that was intimately aware of what was in those cages," Hoolahan said, adding that as company policy, only $50,000 is kept in any cage. "We had no reason to believe that there was more than $50,000 in that cage. That's another reason why we would believe that, it's an inside job."
While suspects weren't captured on cameras inside, surveillance video from outside the building showed a white car being filled with what looks like bags. Then, a couple of hours later a truck is filled up as well.
"I felt so responsible knowing that I disregarded that alarm. It was me that disregarded the alarm. That's a pretty tough one. That's a pretty tough one to swallow that I basically let them win," Hoolahan said.
His father started Bellevue Rare Coin in 1978 and Hoolahan said they've dealt with little crime up until recent years. They even had to shut down its flagship West Seattle location after it was robbed last year.
He said it had been 42 years without a single encounter.
"Since 2020 to today, I've lost track how many people have come in here with guns, how many people have broken our windows, how many people have broken our doors, and now broken through our walls," Hoolahan said.
The family owned business now may change it business practices by greatly reducing the amount of gold and silver inventory it offers, but Hoolahan is trying to stay positive.
"We might now have been kicked into gear to innovate in a different way than we have in the past and create something even better than we had," Hoolahan said.
Tacoma police are investigating and so far, no one has been arrested.