On September 7, Feathered Follies store owner Mercedes Kemp opened her store and noticed in a back room the blinds were messed up, the cages were pushed over, the window glass was broken, and two of her precious birds, an umbrella cockatoo named Tofu, and an African red belly parrot named Plato, were missing. Both, valued in the thousands of dollars, had been birdnapped.
She reported the theft to local TV stations, Online news, social media, and of course, the Concord Police Department. Within a month, Concord Police Detective Dylan Luciano had located one of the birds, Tofu, in the Los Angeles area and apprehended one of the two suspected birdnappers.
With no video at the crime scene and the only clue being a single feather in the parking lot, how did police ever track Tofu in Los Angeles?
Luciano had followed a trail that led from Concord to Union City, to San Jose, to Hawaii, to Hayward, to Modesto to Los Angeles. That is some crack detective work.
Processing the crime scene for fingerprints and DNA produced no leads. So, he put out an APB (All Points Bulletin) to all the law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area.
In roughly three weeks, the Union City Police who were investigating a couple of guys, Edward Casey, 45, of San Jose, and Erick Stabile, 44, Fremont, for burglaries, noticed a big white bird in their San Jose house. Remembering the APB, they contacted Detective Luciano to see if it could be related.
Pictures of Tofu and Plato were also found on Casey’s phone as well as a search history for exotic bird stores and directions to Feathered Follies. Phone records and traffic cameras put him on route to and from the store at the time of the burglary.
By the time Luciano could execute a search warrant in San Jose, Stabile had become nervous and fled with the birds. He had fled to Hawaii, where his father lived.
“We were able to find out where the suspect’s father had lived and get ahold of the father on the phone. But he was uncooperative,” Luciano said.
The only thing the father was willing to tell the police was that Stabile had sold the birds to a woman in a hotel in Hayward. A forensic examination of the father’s cell phone device pursuant to a search warrant confirmed that someone had purchased at least one of the birds from Stabile.
“Her name was Sonia Perez, also a transient from Fremont,” Mercedes recalls. Perez could not be located so Luciano contacted her family who said they hadn’t seen their daughter in a while. But they stated they have a family friend who lives in Modesto who’s into birds.
“We went to Modesto and found the (Perez’s) family who led us to the family friend who was known to sell birds,” Luciano said. They reached out to that guy and confirmed Perez had sold him a big white bird. But he had since sold it to another bird seller in Modesto.
At this point, the trail ends for Plato.
“So, we went to the pet store in Modesto. We found out that the two owners of this store had split up within the last couple of weeks. The one owner we were talking to said that he didn’t have the bird or knew anything about it but led us to the second owner. We went to the second owner who was very cooperative. He and his wife said they didn’t know that the bird was stolen.”
They told Luciano that they, unfortunately had just sold it to a guy who had come up from Los Angeles, bought it, and then took it back to LA.
“I got brought into the loop because the husband and wife had posted an Instagram post with available birds, and Tofu was in that. I was able to positively ID him,” Mercedes said. “I actually got to talk to the wife on the phone. As soon as they heard that he was stolen, they’re like, ‘Oh my god. We’re going to make it right.’ They drove down to LA that night, talked to the customer, gave him his money back, and brought Tofu back at two in the morning.”
By morning, Mercedes was in Modesto to recover her stolen Tofu. “We saw each other from across the street. He knew who I was as soon as we locked eyes.” A video of the reunion is on You Tube. It’s hard to tell who was more excited, Tofu or Mercedes.
Detective Luciano attributed the successful investigation to good old-fashioned police work. “This was an investigation that encompassed the three main parts in law enforcement: agency collaboration with other police departments, technology, and simply good old-fashioned police work, getting your boots on the ground and talking to people. We were led to nineteen or twenty different leads as we were going through this, running all throughout San Jose, the different bird stores, and going to dead end after dead end. This is all three key components of twenty-first century policing put into one.”
As for Plato, the investigation is still ongoing, Feathered Follies is offering a substantial reward for Plato’s return. The person of interest, Sonia Perez, has yet to be located.
Scan the QR code to watch the incredibly emotional reunion.
See the heartwarming reunion of Mercedes and Tofu