Foreman Dario Orozco stands among tire tracks and destroyed melons from the Tecklenburg Farm. Thieves have made off with thousands of melons in the past two weeks after running over this fence. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

Night prowlers

Thieves steal over 3,000 melons from local ranch

They come in the cover of night.

After smashing through fences with a large vehicle, the thieves hop out and begin loading it with melons. Just as quickly, they vanish, leaving tire tracks and a broken fence for Dario Orozco to find the next morning.

At least three times in less than two weeks, thieves have made off with a total of more than 3,000 melons from the local Tecklenburg Ranch, where Orozco is foreman.

"They just back their trucks into it and then they start helping themselves," he said Thursday, standing in the middle of a 65-acre field at the Wells Lane Ranch, just south of Kettleman Lane.

For ranch owner Jon Tecklenburg, the loss equates to more than $9,000. Additionally, he's laying off seven field workers for several days starting today, in part to cut costs but also because there just isn't enough fruit left to harvest.

"We were just in the process of paying back loans, so when we lost two weeks worth of income, that hurt," he said.

Fruit theft is not new in San Joaquin County, said Randy Bender with the Sheriff's Rural Crime Task Force. But the large quantities of missing fruit have made deputies increase patrols and also focus on roadside vendors who have no license to sell produce.

"We cited four of them in the past few days, selling a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables," Bender said.

Such vendors aren't necessarily selling stolen fruit, but if they don't have a license, they are subject to citation. Additionally, anyone transporting more than 200 pounds of produce must be able to provide law enforcement with a bill of lading to prove the fruit's origin, Bender said.

Bender and his colleagues have also been checking flea markets for large quantities of fruit. While farmers markets require all produce be inspected by the agricultural commissioner, Tecklenburg said, flea markets only require vendors obtain a permit.

Tecklenburg, who manages and sells his own fruit at Lodi's weekly downtown farmer's market, is known for his unique melons. They range from miniature "personal" watermelons to Ambrosia and Can-Dew melons, which are in the Musk family of melons, along with cantaloupes.

Oliver Tecklenburg, 92, talks about how his grandfather had watermelons stolen in 1895. Now his son, Jon Tecklenburg and he have had thousands of melons stolen in the past two weeks. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

After the recent thefts, though, visitors at the Thursday night farmer's markets won't have as large a melon selection, and Tecklenburg said his Ambrosias are in short supply.

He typically sells about 1,500 melons each Thursday night, and was warning people that his melon crop is now in short supply. Not only did the culprits take ripe melons, but they also took those not ready to be picked, Tecklenburg said.

More melons are growing, but it takes about 85 days for them to mature, he said.

"They've been stealing watermelons since 1895, when my grandfather started raising them," said Tecklenburg's 92-year-old father, Oliver Tecklenburg.

He still lives at the ranch, and remembers a time when the water table was high enough that he didn't even have to irrigate melons.

Thefts aren't new, the younger Tecklenburg agreed, but he said he's never before seen such large operations.

"They (the thieves) don't realize that if they worked at a store, they wouldn't want somebody going in and taking stuff off the shelves," he said.

He can tell stories of small-time fruit thieves, such as the woman dressed in a long dress who, when he approached her in an apple orchard, said they were "God's apples."

Jon Tecklenburg cuts into a personal-sized watermelon as he checks on what is left of his crop Thursday. Thieves backed a truck through a fence and loaded the spoils in the middle of the night. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

When he threatened to call the police, she threw the apples at his feet and ran to a waiting car.

Another time, he said, gloved workers were harvesting apples into foam-lined baskets to prevent bruising when he spotted men with plastic buckets and no gloves. Even when Jon Tecklenburg confronted them, the men tried to say they were working for a man at the end of the row — though the foreman was actually at the other end of the tree row.

The Tecklenburgs aren't the only ones hit, and Jon Tecklenburg has compared notes with area farmers, some of whom have had whole trees stripped of peaches. He also got word that one family lost almost all of its jalapeño peppers.

Investigators believe four to six people were involved in the Tecklenburg thefts. Whether more are operating is not known.

For now, Orozco has increased his patrol of the Tecklenburg property, and Jon Tecklenburg talked to a man about purchasing cameras that would at least record the thieves in action.

"He said in the darkness, you can tell if a jackrabbit is male or female, they're that good," Jon Tecklenburg said.

Contact reporter Layla Bohm at layla@lodinews.com.

First published: Friday, August 4, 2006