»In which time flies like an arrow

but fruit flies like a banana. Or, rather, fruit thieves like avocados and almonds. These twain are high-revenue, easily-portable, hard-to-spoil crops.
A few years ago, Patricia Leigh Brown had an engaging piece in the New York Times about avocado thieves in Southern California.

January 26, 2004
Someone Is Stealing Avocados, And 'Guac Cops' Are on the Case
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

The thieves come in the dead of night, after it rains and the hillsides are empty, or during a full moon. They disappear into jungly thickets on steep, remote hillsides, stepping carefully through the groves to avoid crunching leaves before doing their dirty work. They operate stealthily, without clippers, amassing warty, thick-skinned booty by the hundreds.

Allen Luce, a retired beekeeper, suspected the worst recently when he spied an unfamiliar red pickup truck parked beside the lush canopies of his neighbors' thousand-acre avocado grove. ''At a dollar or more a pound, it adds up pretty fast,'' he said, speaking of the Hope diamond of these parts: the avocado.

They call it green gold.

''When the Super Bowl comes, there is going to be thievery,'' Mr. Luce said. ''People want guacamole.''

Here in San Diego County, the source of nearly half of the nation's avocados, harvest season brings with it not only the promise of some $43.5 million worth of cilantro-laced party dip, but also a dreaded local crime: avocado theft. With the price now hovering around $1.20 a pound -- roughly two avocados -- Karen Grangetto awoke after a full moon last month to the telltale phantom stems at eye level on plucked boughs. She figured she had lost $1,000 to $2,000 worth of fruit.

''It gets pretty eventful at this time of year,'' Ms. Grangetto said, her emotions betraying none of the thick skin of the coveted Hass avocado variety. ''It gives you a bad feeling. It's like somebody breaking into your home.''

In unincorporated towns like Valley Center and Fallbrook in San Diego County, and north to San Luis Obispo, avocados are what oranges are to Florida and chardonnay grapes are to the Napa Valley. California is no stranger to agricultural theft. In an eight-county area of the Central Valley last year, for instance, an estimated $8.4 million worth of pesticides, sprinkler equipment, diesel fuel, tractors and other farm property was reported stolen, including $100,000 worth of gnarled walnut burls, prized for furniture, which had been yanked out of the ground with chains and pickup trucks.

But nowhere is agricultural theft taken more seriously than in San Diego and Ventura Counties, which together grow 68 percent of the nation's avocados and where at this time of year the grove roads are literally paved with guacamole from vehicles squashing fallen fruit.

''It's a tough type of investigation,'' said Clyde Kodadek, a lieutenant in the Fallbrook substation, one of several county sheriffs' stations where ''guac cops'' track avocado thieves, a mission that includes periodic undercover investigations with code names like Operation Green Gold.

''It's like identity theft,'' Lieutenant Kodadek said. ''The problem is, when God made avocados, he didn't put serial numbers on them.''

Avocados have been a way of life here ever since the early 1970's, when farmers began planting lucrative groves at high elevations.

The size and price of avocados, which are hard as baseballs until they ripen several weeks after picking, conspire with geography to make them particularly vulnerable. Unlike crop loss due to freezes or other natural disasters, the theft of avocados or any other fruit or vegetable is not insurable, said Eric Larson, executive director of the San Diego County Farm Bureau. In Valley Center and other rural areas, the ratio of law enforcement to avocados is slim, with two deputies, who must also attend to homicides and other crimes, patrolling 400 square miles.

''Avocados grow on large plots straight up a hill, which impedes the ability to fence them,'' said Jackie Cruz, an agricultural crime prevention specialist for the San Diego County sheriff's office. ''It gives the crooks a huge opportunity not to be detected. And they obviously feel there's a good rate of return.''

In Ventura County, the only major growing area statistically tracking avocado thefts, guac cops arrested 29 suspected thieves last year, charged with stealing an estimated $115,000 worth of avocados. ''It is a rare instance when someone who steals avocados doesn't go to jail,'' said Tom Connors, senior deputy district attorney for Ventura County.

Stealing more than $100 worth of avocados -- like stealing more than $100 worth of olives, lemons, oranges, artichokes, kelp, domestic fowl and other farmed crops and animals -- is a felony in California, Mr. Connors added.

''Most people don't think of agricultural areas as crime-ridden,'' said Don Jennings, the agricultural crimes detective for the Ventura County sheriff's office, who periodically scopes groves with night-vision goggles, and by helicopter with infrared heat-detecting equipment, to detect thieves beneath tree canopies. ''Many don't consider avocados a theft item.''

Noel Stehly, 35, a third-generation avocado rancher in Valley Center who owns or manages 200 acres of groves, said he lost 5,000 to 6,000 pounds to theft on a 60-acre grove last year. While they are a small portion of the grove's annual yield of about 150,000 pounds, stolen avocados add up.

''That was two months of water bills,'' Mr. Stehly said. ''It's a frustration, dang it. You feel violated.''

Although there is no set profile of an avocado thief, law enforcement officials say many of them are transients or petty thieves who steal to support a drug habit, sometimes selling avocados to naïve or unscrupulous roadside stands and restaurants or to wholesalers in Los Angeles. Last summer, in broad daylight, avocado thieves in Bonsall, west of Valley Center, shot at grove workers as they made their getaway. There were no injuries, but he thieves were never caught.

Ms. Cruz of the San Diego County sheriff's office said there tended to be a correlation between price and theft. Although reputable packing houses require documentation showing where avocados were grown, including an authorized signature, she said it was not difficult to launder avocados -- especially around the Super Bowl, which, along with Cinco de Mayo, is the biggest avocado day of the year. ''They go anyplace you can think of,'' she said of rustled fruit. ''There's a lot of guacamole out there.''

The most prominent arrest occurred three years ago, when a three-month sting called Operation Green Gold resulted in the conviction of Ariel Varela, co-owner of a packing company in Fallbrook, who bought more than 1,100 pounds of avocados from an undercover agent. He served a year in the county jail.

''It was the first time to my knowledge a packer had been prosecuted for fencing or laundering stolen fruit,'' said Elisabeth Silva, the deputy district attorney for San Diego County, who specializes in agricultural crimes. Nine other buyers of stolen fruit were arrested that week.

''You've got to play the game crooks play,'' said Tim Mahoney, a corporal in the San Marcos substation, who posed as a thief in Operation Green Gold, selling fruit out of the trunk of a four-door sedan with hidden surveillance cameras.

Fed up with thievery, some growers, like Richard Price, a retired firefighter, are taking an aggressive stance. Most nights between the waxing and waning moon, Mr. Price stakes out his 6 acres of avocados and 14 acres of cut flowers with night-vision goggles, accompanied by Mugsy, his 130-pound Rottweiler. After thieves stole flowers from him recently, Mr. Price, who could become the Charles Bronson of guacamole, planted his hillsides with long-thorned finger cactus -- ''enough to completely engulf the valley,'' he said.

Other nights, he keeps a decoy camper parked with the lights on near the entrance to the grove, where some $30,000 to 40,000 worth of avocados await harvesting. His baby cactuses glint menacingly in the moonlight.

''You nurture something, water it, deal with all its problems, and right when it's perfect and ready for picking, someone in a truck with no overhead comes along and takes it,'' Mr. Price said. ''I'm going to make life real difficult for them. I just really resent being stolen from.''

* Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company