Lingerie thief returns $500 haul after learning she was caught on tape

PALM BEACH GARDENS POLICE

VEHICLE BURGLARY

A woman’s car was illegally entered while parked outside her place of employment in the 4300 block of Design Center Drive and her purse and workout bag stolen. There were no signs of forced entry to the vehicle but the woman said it was locked.

A woman’s car was illegally entered while it was parked outside her residence in the 1100 block of Rainwood Circle. Though the car was rummaged through, the perpetrator got approximately $2 in loose change.

BATTERY

A man said he was attacked by his two roommates at their residence in the 4300 block of Golfers Circle. The man said his roommates were angry because he wasn’t paying enough in rent. He said it started off as a verbal altercation, then the roommates began putting his belonging outside and finally the fists started flying. The man said he fled the residence and called police. Upon investigation, the two other roommates said there was an argument, but that the physical fight began when one roommate came to the defense of the other against the short-pocketed squatter. None of the parties wished to press charges. Police informed the two roommates that they would have to go through the eviction process to get rid of the man.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF

A woman’s car was keyed along the driver’s side rear door and bumper while parked in the 700 block of Sabal Ridge Circle. The woman said she had no known enemies, but surmised someone could be envious because she got a new car.

THEFT

A woman entered a fitting room at a store in the 3100 block of PGA Boulevard and concealed several articles from the store’s Intimates Department under her clothing. The woman then walked out of the store without paying. The store’s loss-prevention officer recognized the woman and contacted her through a third party. She was warned that they had her on surveillance footage stealing the unmentionables. She returned to the store, gave back the stolen items and was arrested on charges of retail theft. The items were worth almost $500.

JUPITER POLICE

BATTERY

An intoxicated man was reported staggering and falling down along the 400 block of West Indiantown Road. Upon investigation, police discovered the man was injured. The man, who had a laceration above his eye and a hematoma on the back of his head, said he was jumped earlier that evening and hit in the back of the head. Fire-rescue responded to the scene and took the man to Jupiter Medical Center.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF

The driver’s side rear door handle was broken off a vehicle while it was parked in the 6600 block of Indiantown Road. The handle was worth $25.

THEFT

A woman walked into a store in the first block of U.S. 1, selected a pair of shoes, tried them on, decided she liked them and walked out of the store without paying. The woman, accompanied by another woman and a man, got into a car and sped away. The store’s loss-prevention officer described the members of the trio as “short and heavy-set” and was able to give police a description of the vehicle. The shoes were worth $50.

NORTH PALM BEACH POLICE

DISTURBANCE

A man walked into a restaurant in the 400 block of U.S. 1 and said someone was shooting at him. The doors to the restaurant were closed and locked and the police were called. The man said the shooting actually occurred in Riviera Beach and that he had run there. Riviera Beach Police were notified and met the man at the restaurant.

A man and woman were seen arguing inside a car and witnesses thought someone was trying to leap from the vehicle near the intersection of Prosperity Farms Road and Lighthouse Drive. When officers arrived, the vehicle was stopped and both parties were outside. The man was issued a traffic citation.

SERVICE CALL

The elevator shaft of a building in the 800 block of U.S. 1 was damaged by golf balls. The glass window in the shaft had been shattered. Numerous golf balls were found in the parking lot and on the roof.

FIGHT

A man shoved the manager of a business in the 700 block of Northlake Boulevard. The man was located a short time later and issued a trespass warning. The manager did not wish to press charges.

MARTIN COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE

DRUGS

A deputy on patrol at 12:44 a.m. spotted a teen riding a bicycle with no front or rear lights at Southeast Federal Highway and Southeast Miami Street in Stuart. The bicyclist told the deputy, “I have two weed pipes in my back pocket.” The deputy asked the young man what he used the pipes for, and the teen replied, “I smoke weed, and I’m a real pothead.” After he was arrested, the teen said he had burglarized several vehicles parked near an area store while he was high on prescription pills. He was taken to the county jail.

THEFT

A woman walked into a fitting room of a store in the 3300 block of Northwest Federal Highway in Jensen Beach with several baby items. She exited without them. An employee found discarded tags and hangers in the fitting room, but the merchandise was not there. The woman was detained as she attempted to leave the store, and the items were recovered. The store management declined to prosecute.

A caregiver hired to assist an elderly woman in the 2200 block of Northeast 13th Court in Jensen Beach abruptly left the country. The woman’s children discovered that a laptop computer and two gift cards were missing from the home. A neighbor said the caregiver had asked him for a ride to the airport, explaining she had to return to her country for a surgical procedure. He said the woman made two stops on the way, one at a bank and a second at a shipping company. He said she put five large garbage bags in a container to have them shipped to her country.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF

A man found his vehicle had been scratched while it was parked at an establishment in the 100 block of Southwest Dixie Highway in Stuart. The man suspects the culprits to be two underage women who were tossed out of the bar earlier in the evening. The pair had tried to return by changing clothing, but the man informed a bouncer that the two were underage and had already been thrown out once. A witness said she saw the two women near the man’s vehicle, but did not see them damage it.

A vehicle parked at a store in the 1200 block of Northeast Jensen Beach Boulevard in Jensen Beach was keyed from front to rear. Damage was estimated at $1,000.

VEHICLE BURGLARY

An iPhone, a bottle of stool softener and prescription medicine were stolen from an unlocked pickup parked in the 7300 block of Southeast Craig Street in Hobe Sound.

HOME BURGLARY

A burglar entered a residence in the 11400 block of Southeast Federal Highway in Hobe Sound and stole a 12-gauge shotgun, gun case, approximately 25 rounds of ammunition and five silver necklaces.

ST. LUCIE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE

DRUGS

During a traffic stop in the 200 block of North 25th Street, a deputy discovered the driver did not have a license, but he did have a bag of pot in his pocket. He was arrested and taken to the county jail.

A teen stopped in the 2200 block of Avenue M for driving without a seat belt did not have a driver’s license, but he did have marijuana and a pipe in his possession. He was arrested.

PORT ST. LUCIE POLICE

BUSINESS BURGLARY

Three nail salons were targeted by a burglar who was successful in defeating the locks at two of them. Salons in the 1300 block of Northwest St. Lucie West Boulevard and the 5400 block of Northwest St. James Drive were entered, and the intruder stole small amounts of cash from their registers. The burglar was unable to gain entry to a salon in the 1700 block of Southwest St. Lucie West Boulevard.

FORT PIERCE POLICE

HOME BURGLARY

Paint supplies and screws were stolen from a residence in the 800 block of North 22nd Street.

SUSPICIOUS INCIDENT

A teen reported being watched by a naked man with binoculars at a beach in the 500 block of South Ocean Drive. The nude sunbather was gone when police arrived.

DRUGS

A man was arrested after he was found in possession of marijuana while standing in front of a store in the 1700 block of Avenue D. The man had dropped the pot into a shopping bag when police arrived, but officers found it in the bag next to some canned chicken and Twinkies.

ROBBERY

A man tried to rip jewelry off another man’s neck in the 1800 block of Fulton Drive. When he was unsuccessful, the would-be thief hit the man in the face with a bottle. He was arrested and taken to the county jail. The victim was treated at an area hospital.

A man reported he was robbed of his cellphone and $60 in the 900 block of King Orange Drive. The man was intoxicated and had no injuries. There were no witnesses.

THEFT

A trash can was stolen from outside a home in the 2600 block of Sunrise Boulevard.

A bicycle was missing from the front yard of a home in the 200 block of South 30th Street.

ASSAULT

A woman in the 700 block of Boston Avenue told police her neighbors beat her. The three, a 30-year-old man and two women, 49 and 24, were arrested and taken to the county jail.

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Change Agents: Naja celebrates women’s beauty and power

SAN FRANCISCO — Catalina Girald sits in the middle of the world headquarters of Naja, a new lingerie company with manufacturing facilities in Medellin, Colombia.

Naja offices consist of a warren of small rooms filled with boxes, whiteboards, an assistant and a tiny dog named Blueberry. The company headquarters actually is the CEO’s apartment, on the fourth floor of a building in a neighborhood not big on glam. And there is no elevator.

But spend any time with Girald, and you start to see not what is, but what can be.

“If I’m not radically changing things; I’m not interested,” says Girald, who gives her age as somewhere in the 30s. “My aim is beyond making high-quality bras and panties. I want to create a lifestyle brand. I see it as the Athleta of what happens in your bedroom and bath.”

While she may be at the beginning of that lofty journey, Girald is bent on her goal. She and her few employees — that is, her entire staff — hustled over to Paris in June in order to showcase Naja’s wares on that fabled catwalk and talk to lingerie wholesalers about carrying the brand in Europe.

Girald’s mission is to be an alternative to Victoria’s Secret, which commands half the $14 billion lingerie industry. While that brand trucks unabashedly in glamour and sex appeal, Naja (pronounced nah-yah) sells clothing inspired by the founder’s global travels and touts an underpinning of social consciousness to boot.

The Tropical Jungle bra features printed batik-like motifs that recall Girald’s time living in Indonesian villages. The Talavera Red collection pays homage to Mexican designs. Panties come etched with inspirational sayings, such as “He offered her the world, she said she had her own.”

Underpinning the collection is a desire to do good. The company’s Underwear for Hope program donates a percentage of purchases to the Golondrinas Foundation in Medellin, where Girald was born. The foundation teaches poor women skills such as sewing which allows them to support their families. They sew the wash-bags that come with each Naja purchase.

“These days there’s certainly less tolerance by consumers for companies that don’t play well with society, whether that’s polluters or those who don’t treat employees well,” says Olivia Khalili, a social business consultant with CauseCapitalism.com. “Some companies talk the talk, but don’t back it up with action, and that will backfire.”

Naja’s site tries to make the company’s mission plain, featuring videos of Golondrinas recipients such as Maria Jaramillo. Gang warfare claimed the life of her sister, leaving Jaramillo to care for her own and her sister’s daughters, five in all. She now supports that large family with sewing work for Naja.

GOING FOR SOUL, NOT SEX

As motivational for Girald is a desire to make products that celebrate women.

“I think Victoria’s Secret makes very nice products, but it’s a company sending out a message to women that they have to be very sexual, which I don’t think is a good message to send out to our girls,” she says. “I’m aiming for a brand with soul.”

That’s a vision that hooked Hap Klopp, co-founder of The North Face, who serves on Naja’s board of advisers.

“I found a kindred spirit in her, given her desire to have a corporate policy of giving back, her passion for changing the world and her determination to be disruptive in a space,” says Klopp. “Besides, you gotta love someone who takes a break to go live in a yurt in Mongolia.”

True enough. In fact, Girald’s meandering life story sometimes defies credulity. She moved with her Colombian parents to Connecticut at age 4, after her father, a New York University-trained neurologist, settled into a practice. She decamped to Amherst at age 16 to play tennis for the college, but “I was 16 and hated everything.”

She bounced around Europe, studying art in Paris, then returned to Texas, where her father had transferred, and attended Texas AM. That led to law school at Boston College, a legal job with Skadden in New York, and not long after a trip west to Stanford University for business school.

By the time she graduated in 2006, she was already hammering away at her first start-up, Moxsie, which was aimed at helping businesses connect with consumers. When it foundered in 2009, she bought a one-way plane ticket for parts unknown.

“I was disillusioned with Silicon Valley, so for 18 months, I was out there,” she says. “I lived with nomads in Mongolia who are eagle hunters. In Indonesia, I was fascinated by the weaving cultures and their designs. In Vietnam, I lived with the Hmong, whose hands are dyed blue from indigo. Then I went back to Colombia and went into investment banking.”

A LIFE OF CONTRADICTIONS

You get the picture. Girald’s life is a dizzying if electrifying pastiche of experiences, held together by a fierce curiosity about other cultures. It’s therefore not too surprising that she’s a bit of a contradiction herself. On the one hand, she’s quick to decry the “materialism” of Western culture, but on the other she’s the first to admit she loves to shop, particularly for shoes.

In a very real sense, Naja is her attempt to reconcile those two parts of her psyche. By producing goods that people need and want but in a manner that acknowledges the strength of women the world over, she could well tap into a new vein that takes conscious consumerism to a new level.

And if not, it’ll at least be another wonderfully crazy stop on Girald’s unpredictable journey through life.

“I’d like to also start selling soap,” Girald announces, Blueberry lounging in her lap. “I think you can give people luxurious bars at fair prices. Did I tell you that I studied soap manufacturing while I was in Indonesia?”

But of course she did.

ABOUT CATALINA GIRALD, 30something

What: Founder of Naja, a new lingerie company inspired by her travels

Where: San Francisco

What did you learn from the ultimately unsuccessful run of your first company, Moxsie? “A lot of why that company failed was me not standing up for myself as much as I should have. Some big decisions were made for me (by investors). I held my thoughts in. As I traveled the world, I met so many poor but proud women who were never afraid to tell villagers how they felt.”

Why were you convinced the market needed another lingerie company? “I interviewed 600 women to understand the market, and had a private Facebook page where women could freely express themselves. Beyond learning about people’s lingerie-buying habits, I also learned that if you get women together in a safe environment they will share things about health and other issues, to help each other out. I felt a company that stood for that would be good.”

One pair of underwear garnered a ‘cease-and-desist’ letter from Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook. “Yes, the undies had ‘Not Bossy, Boss,’ written on them, which was our tribute to the whole Lean In movement. But apparently that’s something she says, not that that’s intellectual property. But we changed it. Now they read, ‘Very Bossy,’ and beneath that, ‘Boss.’”

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