A week ago, the owner of Gilded Cage Boutique on Carden Street says she witnessed a woman take items from her store in front of her eyes.
Instead of handing the woman over to the law immediately, Sandra Stephenson felt inclined to empathize with the woman thinking circumstances and desperate times can lead people to actions out of their character.
“If I'm going to run my business this way and source things ethically and buy things ethically and have a different way of thinking than most retail, then I might as well apply it to my daily life too,” says Stephenson.
Gilded Cage Boutique sells ethically-sourced luxury products from around the world, meaning that the makers of the products are compensated in over a days wage and can be traced right to the factory they work in.
“'Do good’ is the motto,” she says and it is what she thought of when dealing with the situation at hand last week.
Stephenson was sitting in the store during the day when a familiar face walked through the doors.
“I knew something was up. I could just feel it,” says Stephenson who had seen the woman enter the store in the past and never purchase anything.
After greeting the woman, Stephenson says the woman proceeded to the back of the store where the linens were placed.
“I was on my phone doing like an Instagram post or something and it had occurred to me that she had been there for a while and I'm like is she trying something on? And so I looked around and I saw her putting linen in her knapsack,” says Stephenson.
“I'm like what?! This has never happened to me before. What am I going to do?”
So Stephenson says she took a photo of the woman as she was heading out and confronted her saying “I saw you put those linen things in your bag,” to which the woman replied, “no I didn't.”
Rattled by the situation that was unfolding in front of her, Stephenson says she asked the woman if she could see what is in her bag to which the woman replied "no."
“I felt violated, like what gives you the right to do that? How do you deserve that more than I deserve that?” says Stephenson.
Knowing she wants her items returned, Stephenson believed the best way to creatively solve this problem was to post the woman's photo on the Facebook group Guelph This & That to get the community’s support in identifying the woman without penalizing her through the law.
“I've really learned to give people the benefit of the doubt and try to think outside the box,” says Stephenson.
So she put up the post on Facebook, describing the incident, and offering a grace period for the woman to return the items.
Within 10 minutes, Stephenson says she had 30 messages from people who were sharing the woman’s Facebook page, name, address and even phone number.
And once found, Stephenson removed the woman’s photo.
“It's about finding out who this person is and just reason with her human to human and say look, you made a mistake, it's going to get a lot worse if we don't fix it so let's just try and fix it,” says Stephenson.
“The community just pulled together like I couldn't have imagined.”
Stephenson says in this situation, she was compelled to think about her father who struggled with mental health issues who might have behaved the same way in this situation.
“He died and had nobody around him. He didn’t have any support. He had so many addictions and mental health problems that he had isolated himself completely,” says Stephenson.
“It made me think this person has people that love her and would want to support her and wouldn't want to see this for her.”
With the help of the community officer, Stephenson says she learned that there were similar thefts that day involving the same woman. She also learned that the woman is currently suffering from mental health problems.
Unable to get the items back, the family of the woman reimbursed Stephenson $600, the price of the lost goods.
“We just developed this solution to the problem without charging her and without making it worse for anybody else,” says Stephenson.
She says the community began to reach out to her inspired by the whole situation.
“I think the lesson here for me and for a lot of people has been the thought that we can approach things in a kinder way,” says Stephenson.
“The downtown businesses came together so well, the community officer was so amazing, everybody just surpassed my expectations.”
