Your Family Jeweler was burglarized July 17 and suffered heavy losses, but the store has weathered the storm and got back on its feet with help from around Plant City.
Mike Hamilton’s 60th birthday couldn’t have been much worse.
On July 17, the owner of Your Family Jeweler woke up and learned burglars broke into his store early in the morning and just about cleaned the place out. More than $400,000 in inventory was taken and more than $40,000 in damage was done to the store during the entry and exit, Hamilton said. The incident is under investigation by law enforcement agencies from Plant City Police Department to the FBI, and the staff believe it could have been the work of a Chilean burglary crew that’s made headlines all over the United States since 2019 for similar jewelry store burglaries.
“I just think it’s one of the saddest things to happen for Mike Hamilton, especially on his birthday,” jeweler Joe Grimes said. “We’ve been working our butts off to try to reopen, to recoup the losses and serve the community. That’s what we’ve been doing.”
What happened to Your Family Jeweler was enough to kill off many businesses in many small towns. This one survived.
Hamilton and the staff have spent the last month working nearly nonstop to recover. The store got some help from an insurance payout, which covered about a quarter of the losses, and have had people from all over Plant City reach out to lend a hand.
“It’s all been cleaned up now and you can’t tell,” Hamilton said. “They stole a lot of equipment, destroyed equipment and just made a huge mess while they were here. We’ve had people come in and offer to help clean up, paint, do whatever they could do. We had people volunteer to help us move out the old safes and things that were damaged, to get them to where they were out of the way to where we could clean up and get everything fixed. We had a lot of people reach out to us.”
Even other Plant City jewelers reached out, brushing aside the fact they’d be competing against one another under normal circumstances.
“Robbins Jewelry and Pawn actually told me, ‘We don’t care, we’ll even front you enough money to get back open and give you the inventory to do it. We don’t want you going anywhere,’” Hamilton said. “They’re what you’d consider a competitor, but they’re friends. We’re not competitors, we’re friends. Brown’s, first time I’ve met (Rusty Brown), he came by to tell me he was sorry and if there was anything he could do, he offered to help. Every jewelry store in Plant City. John Shupard across the street even stopped by. I’d never met John or Rusty but they both came by telling us they were sorry and hoping we did OK.”
Customers who have spent the last few weeks calling to see when the store would reopen have finally gotten their wish. After replenishing the inventory and getting the storefront all touched up, Your Family Jeweler reopened on Monday and has seen plenty of foot traffic since then.
“It feels a lot better, to put it mildly,” Hamilton said. “We’re relived. We’re glad to get the store back open, customers coming in and see people again. We’re doing what we enjoy.”
Your Family Jeweler is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays. Its phone number is 813-752-0585.
