On January 27, a Gilpin County resident helped the Gilpin Sheriff’s Office find and detain two mail thieves who had apparently been victimizing residents in mid-County.

I’ll let Larry Dean Starkey tell most of the story in his own words.

Larry Dean Starkey says, “I want to let everyone know that my wife and I just got home from helping Gilpin County Sheriffs detain two mail thieves.”

On the way to his home on Caesar Road from dropping his kids off at school, Starkey and his wife noticed a purple Jeep Wrangler parked next to the row of mailboxes. He noticed that a “younger lady” was standing next to the boxes, watching as he drove by. “I thought it was odd behavior and also didn’t recognize the vehicle in the neighborhood, so I turned the car around and parked next to the mailboxes” while he checked his box.

He saw that the Jeep, with two women in it, “drove up [his] road and into the neighborhood.” He followed, but lost sight of the Jeep. “By the time I drove around my loop and back to the boxes at the end of the road, the Jeep was gone.”

Starkey then decided to drive to Taggerts to see if perhaps they had driven there. As they pulled into Taggerts, he saw that purple Jeep parked at the pump. “I parked next to it and went inside to make it look as if I wasn’t following. My wife noticed the passenger inside the Jeep flipping through several envelopes after I walked by.”

Once the Jeep drove off headed towards Nederland, Starkey contacted the sheriff’s dispatcher and then followed the suspicious vehicle from a distance. “After getting past Roy’s Last Shot, the Jeep driver realized they were being followed and decided to brake check me from about 80 feet away.

“I stopped with safe distance. The Jeep continued on towards Nederland while throwing heaps of mail out the passenger window every couple of miles.” The Jeep turned onto Highway 72, with Starkey following “all the way to Wondervu, where they turned onto Stone Cliff Circle,” which has only one way in or out. “I blocked the vehicle from leaving but had to pull off because she [the Jeep driver] was ready to do whatever it took to ram her way out. She turned back onto 72 headed toward Pinecliffe, so I followed while still on the phone with the dispatcher.”

After pursuing the fleeing Jeep for about an hour and a half, “she turned onto Beaver Creek and was blocked by an unmarked sheriff and myself. They did arrest the two females and towed the vehicle.”

After the apparent thieves were apprehended, Starkey and his wife, along with the two officers, went back along the path taken by the Jeep to collect as much mail off the side of the road as they could. Unfortunately, snowplows had already gone by and scraped the roadside.

“If anyone has been missing any mail, I would imagine the sheriff’s department will reach out to you,” Starkey wrote.

He wants to thank the Gilpin Sheriff’s department “for helping us catch these thieves.” “Hopefully,” he adds, “this is who has been up here hitting all of our community mailboxes,” ranging from the bottom of Golden Gate all the way up to Caesar and Nero Roads.

When approached for a comment, Sheriff Armstrong wrote, “It was a great team effort. The citizens who took the initiative really did a great job. The more eyes we have on suspicious activity and reported in a timely fashion the better the end result. If you see something, say something immediately. Our citizens know who lives in their subdivisions and know if something just doesn’t seem right. Crime Prevention in our community is a partnership between the sheriffs office and our residents.”

Meanwhile, the case is under investigation, and the Sheriff’s office is not able to release any details yet.