To Catch a Thief

EDISON, N.J. — Jeff Ackerman of Jeff’s Surgical Supply, a
full-service provider in Edison, N.J., could have started the New
Year off better, he said.

At 2 a.m. on Jan. 3, the HME veteran got a call asking how many
delivery vehicles his company owned. The local police were looking
at a videotape showing an individual getting out of a Jeff’s
Surgical truck and breaking the front window of a convenience store
down the street.

“They asked if there was any reason someone would be driving the
vehicle. I explained that I have a driver on call. The police asked
me to call him. He was sleeping at home,” Jeff said. “I told them I
had a tracking device on the vehicle, so I booted up my laptop,
went to the FleetTraks [GPS] program and starting giving the police
the route our stolen vehicle was taking.”

After a 50-mile chase through four counties at speeds up to 100
miles per hour, police captured the fleeing driver after he crashed
the van in neighboring Newark. During the chase, the police also
got a call that the door of a jewelry store on the same street as
Ackerman’s business had been shattered and $7,000 worth of jewelry
stolen.

“I was able to give the police a printout of the vehicle’s
movements from the time it was stolen until it was stopped,” said
Ackerman. “I felt like I was on the TV show ‘Cops!’”

Ackerman said the police found the stolen jewelry in the van.
What they didn’t find was his 2010 end-of-the-year paperwork or his
power wheelchair repair tools, which had been storied in the front
of the van. With his insurance deductible, he’s out that money, he
said, and “no one has seen the paperwork.”

It felt good to help the police, said Ackerman, who has equipped
all three of his vans with VGM’s FleetTraks system (OnBoard
Communications). In all his years of business, this is only the
second incident of theft the company has had. “Someone broke our
storefront and took some money from the register three years ago,
but it was nothing like this,” he said.

“The only bad part of this,” he continued, “is that I’m the only
one who is out anything. The jewelry store got their jewelry back,
the police got their criminal, but I have a smashed truck with
$7,800 worth of damage that hasn’t been repaired yet.”

Ackerman said he’s worried about his 25-year-old company. “I’m
one of the guys who might not survive if they keep competitive
bidding,” he said. “I’m hanging by a thread now. This didn’t
help.”