Gunmen order women to give up jewelry (by Michael Manekin, Inside Bay Area )
BURLINGAME
TWO MEN WALTZED INTO a Burlingame hair salon with ski masks and guns on a drizzly Thursday afternoon and raced from swivel chair to hair dryer, demanding that stylists and clients alike hand over their jewelry, robbery victims said.
The robbery initiated a manhunt several blocks from downtown Burlingame, featuring police officers with rifles and detectives dusting for prints, according to the victims. A police spokesman confirmed that two men held up Avenue Styles on Bayswater Avenue, but officials did not respond to repeated media requests for more details.
The robbery occurred around 1:15 p.m., said Allegra Hansen, owner of the salon. "I saw two guys at the door, so I just go up to them and say, 'Can I help you?' because I'm the sheriff here I have to take care of the girls. I'm thinking it's somebody's teenage sons, but my God they look terrible, like gangsters. They have hoods, ski masks, baggie jeans. Then I realize what's happening."
What was happening, Hansen said, was that two men were running through the salon with raised guns screaming, "Give me all your rings, give me all your rings." First, they wanted Hansen's rings, but they quickly discovered she was ringless. Then, they made a beeline for the nail room, learning that the manicurist didn't have rings, either. The next potential victim was getting her hair tinted, but she wasn't wearing any rings because she'd just had a manicure.
By the time the two men found their next victim one of the stylists they were pretty mad,according to Hansen. But there was a problem which made them madder, the salon owner said. "(The stylist) had two rings on and she couldn't get them off, and they said, 'Take your rings off, or we're going to shoot your fingers off …' They were holding the gun sideways like a gangster."
Impatient, one of the gunmen fixed his attention on another stylist who was shampooing a client at the time, Hansen said. He pointed the gun directly at the woman and demanded her wedding ring "a large, square-cut diamond," the salon owner said.
Meanwhile, the first stylist suggested that she would need hand lotion to pry the rings off her fingers at which point, both gunmen sprinted out of the salon, Hansen said.
Neither bothered to demand money from the business, she added. The salon owner immediately called the police, who arrived within minutes, she said.
Beth McCarthy owner of Valentino's, the salon next door realized something was happening when she looked out the window and saw two police officers running outside with their guns drawn. They were probably running around the corner, said Hansen. That's where a witness had seen two men in ski masks hop into a black Mercedes, she said.
The description of that car must have been very similar to a black Mercedes owned by Scott Jackson of Bay Area Firearms Instruction Group. The gun instructor was driving along Broadway just a few blocks away when police pulled him over to see if, perhaps, he had been responsible for the stick-up in a nearby salon.
Police determined that he was not responsible for the robbery. Nonetheless, Jackson raced to the salon, where he dropped off a short stack of brochures ("Learn to shoot safely and effectively"). He informed the women at Avenue Styles that proper firearms training could be just the ticket for such occasions and that if he, for instance, had driven past the business "with my guns" at the exact moment that two men were trying to yank rings off ladies' fingers, he "would have gotten them down on the ground and that's that!" "The best gunfight is no gunfight," Jackson added. "But if something happens, you need to protect yourself."
The salon's teenage receptionist asked Jackson why the gunmen only demanded rings. "Because first of all, they're idiots," he said. Second of all, the men were "definitely meth addicts or heroin addicts" because they wanted to steal something "fencible."
The gunmen, who were white, were certainly not very presentable, Hansen said. One man was 6 feet tall a "sloucher" who needed to lose weight and dress nicer, she said. The other suspect was shorter, but none of the women got a good look at him.
"To me, they seemed really nervous," said Dorean, a client who declined to give her last name. "They seemed like amateurs." She reconsidered. "But the guy could have shot me, right? And I could be dead, right? Thank God they weren't gun-happy."
Hansen whose heart, she said, was calmly "going pitter-patter, which is interesting, maybe because I'm in shock" said that feeling safe in an upscale community can be a dangerous luxury. "It's definitely crossed my mind that we could be sitting ducks here because we're so innocent to crime," Hansen said. "We're not street-smart. We're used to living in a place that's pretty crimeless." From now on, she said, Avenue Styles will keep its front door locked.

– Written by Fiona