‘We look out for each other’: N.B. pawn shop employee returns stolen item to competitor

A New Brunswick pawnshop retrieved items that were stolen from a competitor.

What started out as an unfortunate incident was resolved thanks to an act of kindness and solidarity between two small Moncton, N.B., businesses.

Staff at Nerdful Things Moncton said a man stole a few items from the Mountain Road pawn shop last Wednesday.

They confronted the man and got one item back, but he did make off with a guitar cord, according to store staff.

Discouraged by the theft, the manager posted surveillance video of the act on Facebook.

The video was seen the same day by Ross Purves, an employee at Parlour Pawn, another pawn shop located just up the road.

Purves said a man came into the store a couple hours later with the guitar chord.

He said it was very easy to identify the $109.95 price tag as an item from Nerdful Things.

“Buddy didn’t hold up very well to being confronted with this information. It was easy for him to be convinced to relinquish the item,” said Purves.

Much to the shock of the staff at Nerdful Things, Purves returned the chord after his shift.

“He came in with the biggest smile, saying, ‘Support local business!’ and I couldn’t believe it,” said Nerdful Things co-owner Stephanie Furlong.

“My heart got pounding and I was just so proud that our community could come together.”

Furlong’s father Travis was a longtime employee at Parlour Pawn, so the two competitors have a good relationship.

“I was shocked that he came through the door,” said Furlong. “The last thing I was expecting was somebody coming to bring back our stuff, let alone another business like that. They could have taken our stuff, sold it and made a profit, but they brought it back instead.”

Purves has been at Parlour Pawn for 12 years and has seen his fair share of shoplifting.

He wanted to do his part, so he confronted the man.

“He handed it to me to sell and I told him, ‘I’m going to bring this back to Travis, is that OK?’ Well, he didn’t have too much to say to that,” said Purves.

The staff at Nerdful Things posted the surveillance video of Purves returning the item on social media and it has received 100,000 views.

Furlong said they posted the video of Purves marching into the store to show he’s a Good Samaritan and to make the community aware that stealing from a small business can really hurt.

“It’s not a no-loss issue. It can really affect multiple people when they do that,” said Furlong.

Bill Daigle, the general manager at Parlour Pawn, said Purves absolutely did the right thing.

“Ross took it upon himself, business to business, to say, ‘Hey, that’s stolen. I’m taking it back to the victim,’ and the person left,” said Daigle. “At the end of the day, when Ross closed here, he walked into the store at Nerdful Things and said, ‘Here, we look out for each other.’”

Furlong and her sister Zoë, who manages the store, both called Purves an amazing member of the community.

As for the guitar cord, it’s back on the shelf at Nerdful Things, waiting for a music lover to come buy it.

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