ANAHEIM : Stolen Little League Equipment Is Found

Weather permitting, the bats will swing and the balls will fly today when the East Anaheim American Little League officially begins its new season.

For a while, though, it looked as if the season and the spirits of 350 Little Leaguers might be dampened--not by rain, but by burglars who stole $10,000 in league equipment and candy this week.

Gone were 1,800 brand-new baseballs, a couple dozen bats, athletic gear, 10 cases of M&Ms; and even two public-address systems used to introduce the would-be Ty Cobbs and Joe DiMaggios who trot every year onto the dusty baseball diamonds at Boysen Park.

But thanks to a tip from a student at a nearby school, police--including an officer whose children play in the league--recovered most of the stolen goods Thursday and arrested two suspects.

“It’s wonderful,” league auxiliary member Denise Bendig said Friday as she prepared for opening-day ceremonies and a pancake breakfast fund-raiser. “It restores your faith in the community again.”

Last Monday, though, the skies looked dark for the league when Bendig discovered the theft. Her 9-year-old son Adam was gearing up for practice at Boysen Park when she found the door to the storage shed forced open and mounds of equipment and candy missing.

Enter sympathetic Anaheim police officers.

“Our hearts sank when we realized that their season opener was probably not going to happen the way they wanted it to,” Lt. Ray Welch said. “You know what it’s like being a little kid, wanting your season to open with all new stuff.”

So Welch summoned three officers to his office Thursday morning and issued a challenge: Find the goods by the end of the watch, 4 p.m. to be exact.

One of the officers was Sgt. Tom Mathisen, whose two young sons are league players. On a hunch, the 19-year police veteran hustled out to Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School--next to the park--to seek help from students there.

“I tried to use a little reverse psychology,” Mathisen explained Friday. “I told the kids that they’d been instructed that whenever they need some help, they can always rely on a police officer. So I just reversed the ties and said that we, the Police Department, were asking their help to be our eyes and ears concerning the burglary.”

The strategy worked. Two children told police of a fellow student who had been spied eating candy that allegedly came from the stolen cache.

Police interviewed the youngster and were able to obtain the address of a house in the 1200 block of East Florida Place. One of the occupants consented to a search, and police turned up the public-address systems, some candy and beef jerky, catcher’s gear, baseball helmets, bats and balls.

At what time did he and his colleagues recover the stolen goods? “One o’clock,” Mathisen boasted--three hours before deadline.

Police later arrested Carlos Hurtado Contreras and Sergio Contreras Hurtado, both 18, in connection with the theft. More of the suspected loot was found in Hurtado Contreras’ truck outside his place of employment in Garden Grove, authorities said.

The two men were taken Thursday evening to the Anaheim Temporary Detention Facility, where they were booked on suspicion of commercial burglary as well as receiving and concealing stolen property. They remained there Friday in lieu of $10,000 bail.

Although most of the candy and the baseballs are still missing, league officials said they were gratified by the swift recovery of the rest. But some aspects of the burglary still puzzled league President David Bendig.

“What would you do with 40 jockstraps?” he asked.