Turquoise Desert Taproom loses 'close to $10,000' due to copper theft

RIO RANCHO — Sometime during the night of Jan. 3, copper was stolen from a transformer in a shopping plaza in Enchanted Hills.

“Somebody decided to steal the copper from the transformer to the building, so that the whole shopping center was without power,” said Armando Martinez said, owner of Turquoise Desert Taproom and Dulce River Bakery. “We didn’t discover it until Sunday afternoon (Jan. 5.)”

Because of that theft, Turquoise Desert Taproom and Dulce River Bakery lost nearly $10,000 in food due to the power being out for about 40 hours.

“Once the power came back on, it was a little too late. We ended up — from the restaurant side — losing about $6,000-$7,000 worth of food, and on the bakery side, we lost $2 to $3 [thousand]. We are close to $10,000 of lost food,” Martinez said.

A video posted on the “Rio Rancho Crime & Community Watch” page showed a white Dodge truck and two individuals stealing the copper from the shopping plaza transformer. The Rio Rancho Police Department had not responded to inquiries on the incident as of press deadline.

“They [RRPD] came that evening that the power was shut off because they arrested someone who stole some copper, but no one had reported copper being stolen yet,” Martinez said. “So, when they saw my Facebook post, they came and talked to me, but I don’t have access to the cameras in the parking lot; the landlord does, so I directed them to the property manager.”

Martinez’s businesses weren’t the only ones affected, and Beyond Mail and Print owner Tiffany Montano lost a lot of business as a result.

“Armando informed me that they were having problems with their lights, and he went to check and found that the transformer box was broken into,” Montano said. “Thank goodness for Armando, because he took care of getting ahold of everybody.”

Beyond Mail and Print, a print and mailing shop that provides various services such as small gift items. Primarily, they do shipping for United States Postal Service, UPS and FedEx.

“Unfortunately, because the theft happened sometime, from my understanding, between Friday night and Saturday morning, since none of us knew about it, we didn’t think anything of it. Well, come Sunday evening, I get a notification from my alarm system that my power is out so ... I came straight down here,” Montano said. “Anything connected to that was destroyed. In this case, it’s my fingerprinting system. I do fingerprints multiple times a day, every day. Every appointment ranges from $3 to $25 an appointment.”

Montano also lost business on many other fronts, including getting some business proposals done on time.

“They need to be printed, laminated, bound; lost out on that $300 and could not do any shipping,” Montano said. “I rely on that word of mouth because no matter how much advertising I do, new people are going to depend on the names they know. Everybody knows FedEX, everybody knows UPS, everybody knows the Post Office. Not everyone knows that Beyond Mail and Print can do those things for them as well.”

Other businesses affected include Double Dragon, Pizza Hut, Anytime Fitness, Fusion Concepts, Mountain View Dentistry and Dollar Tree.

“We all kind of had to rally together and get through it,” Martinez said.