ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – A person who broke into The Soda Fountain early Monday morning ended up leaving with $1,000, according to the owners of the College Park shop.
“You got to be pretty down bad to rob a family-owned ice cream shop,” Nina Plewa said, speaking to News 6 inside The Soda Fountain Thursday morning.
Plewa and her husband are the new owners of the well-known College Park shop, having taken over in March.
“We just wanted to bring a little bit of life back into it and have something for our son that’s special, and for the community, for kids,” Plewa said, holding her 11-month old son, Rome. They plan to rename the shop Rome’s Corner.
And while she’s used to seeing Rome crawl around the shop’s floors, on Monday, she was viewing security footage that showed a stranger crawling inside.
“We see this guy, like, in a full ski mask in an all black outfit, crawling around the store, opening the cash register, taking everything out, going into the kitchen, opening our drawers,” Plewa said, describing the video she shared with News 6.
Donning a black ski mask that obscures his face and dressed in all black, the person–who appears to be a man–is seen from multiple angles roaming through the store. He appears to be attempting to be inconspicuous, but the cameras catch his movements.
“It was very violating,” Plewa said. “It’s something that’s never happened to me before, so it was jarring for sure. Creepy.”
He is observed going through the cash register, which makes a loud noise when it crashes to the floor.
“All the contents were like flipped on the floor,” Plewa said. “So there were like coins everywhere and just like a bit of a mess.”
Plewa said the person took everything in the cash register, plus deposits in envelopes. The total loss ended up amounting to $1,000.
Then there was the door that the person broke to get inside the shop — the one entrance that doesn’t trigger an alarm.
“The door is like $2,000 to fix,” Plewa said. “So that was worse than the cash.”
As first-time owners of a brick-and-mortar store, Plewa and her husband know that every dollar counts — especially because they’re here on a work visa from Canada and cannot qualify for things like a Small Business Administration loan.
But Plewa, who filed a report with Orlando Police, is keeping things in perspective.
“It was damage to the door but it could have been a lot worse,” Plewa said.
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