Business reunites stolen landscaping equipment with the rightful owners
Owner of Campbell’s Gardenland recognized power tools recovered after gang arrests
SAN JOSE >> More than a dozen South Bay landscapers whose stolen gardening equipment was recovered after a series of gang arrests last month were reunited March 23 with the gear that powers their livelihoods.
The array of lawn mowers, leaf blowers, hedge trimmers, chain saws and other high-priced power equipment might have languished in a police warehouse if it weren’t for Gardenland CEO Richard Ogawa, who while viewing news reports recognized that many of the tools were bought from his Campbell business.
Ogawa spotted stickers for Gardenland — a family-run South Bay fixture since 1960 — on some of the photos released to local media and contacted
San Jose police.
“As soon as I saw those, I called the sergeant and was happy to help. This is their livelihood,” Ogawa said of his customers. “Some of the equipment was even brand new. If they don’t have that, they can’t do any work.”
He then offered to search his business’ receipts and records to track down their purchasers, leading to a mass meeting March 23 at a San Jose warehouse, where over 20 pieces of equipment, some costing as much as $1,800 apiece, were returned to their rightful owners.
“Thanks to his company’s excellent record-keeping, we were able to reach the owners of this stolen equipment,” the police department said in a tweet Tuesday.
The power equipment allegedly was stolen either through robberies or thefts linked to a series of alleged armed gang crimes investigated by San Jose police, who made more than a dozen related arrests in mid- to late February.
Police said several victims were landscapers and gardeners who discovered some of the suspects using bolt cutters to pry their power tools away from secured chains on their pickup trucks. When the victims tried to intervene, they were either assaulted, threatened with guns or both. At least two of those thefts were partially captured by either eyewitness or security cameras.
Ogawa said that he was gratified to help the theft victims, knowing how much goes into acquiring the equipment in the first place.
“It takes a lot of hard work to save up, and then to have nothing,” Ogawa said. “That’s why we wanted to do anything to help, and return equipment that they thought they would never get back.”