North Shore store owners say they aren’t changing their habits or getting panicked about safety in light of the four armed robberies or attempted robberies in the area last week.

Lynn Hansen has owned Artisan Shop and Gallery in Wilmette for 30 years. Her store is six stores away from Yellow Bird Stationery, which was the first shop targeted in the crime spree.

“I’m not going to lock my front door and buzz customers in,” Hansen said. “I guess I just don’t live in fear. Stuff happens; houses get robbed. Even if you are on the North Shore, things happen.”

Of course, there’s no way to avoid having some reaction to an armed robbery so close by, she said.

“We are a little bit on guard,” Hansen said. “You just have to be careful and hope it doesn’t happen to you.”

The crime spree began May 16 around 10:50 a.m. at Yellow Bird Stationery store in the Plaza Del Lago shopping center. The next day, an attempted robbery happened at Claire’s, in Glenview, just after the store opened at 10 a.m., police said. Just 35 minutes later, an employee at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory in Northfield was threatened at knife point. Two days after that, Creme de la Creme in Hubbard Woods was robbed.

The suspect in all four incidents is described as a white man in his early 20s or late teens who was wearing a red, hooded sweatshirt that said “lifeguard” on the back.

Mindy Schloss, owns Vintage Nest, which is located in the Glen near Claire’s. She said she learned about the attempted robbery in Glenview Patch. None of her customers have mentioned it, she said, though she and her fellow retailers have been talking about it.

“I think we’re always on guard, not just now. … You have to keep an eye on people when they come in if you see anything out of the ordinary. We keep the police phone number up front,” she said. “It’s unfortunate if it [a robbery] happens, but if it happens all we can do is be prepared as best we can.”

Like Hansen, Schloss said she tells her employees to give any robbers what they want and not to argue.

That’s exactly what Creme de la Crème’s employees did, explained owner Sandy Freeman, who said the so-called lifeguard bandit was non-threatening to the point of being polite.
Even she said that she’s not planning any drastic new security measures.

“We may look into the security thing called the panic button,” she said, but otherwise is just reminding staff to cooperate with a robber. “This has never happened before, and I don't anticipate that it's going to happen again anytime soon."