THIEF MUST STAY AWAY FROM BEANIE BABIES

A Marina woman was sentenced Thursday to at least five years without
Beanie Babies.

Tamara Dee Maldonado, 25, also got six months in jail and five years'
probation for using pilfered credit card numbers to charge $8,000
worth of the beanbag collector's items. And for those five years, law
enforcement agencies will have the right to search Maldonado's home
without a search warrant for Beanie Babies.

The sentence in the Monterey County courtroom came after Deputy
District Attorney Christine Harter asked that Maldonado be prohibited
from possessing Beanie Babies. The toys, she said, are like a drug.

Judge Jonathan Price agreed. And even Maldonado didn't balk at the
condition.

``That's what it was all about. It was like a drug,'' she told deputy
probation officer Douglas Rogers. ``Once I started, I couldn't stop.
It was like being addicted.''

There's some consolation. Only the official Ty brand is off-limits --
other beanbag toys don't count.

The young mother's obsession began when she had to plop Beanie Babies
into Happy Meals all day while working as a cashier at a McDonald's.

She ordered a few for herself over the telephone with her own credit
card and got hooked.

Then she decided she could save money by using someone else's
card.

She asked her ex-husband, Gabriel Maldonado, to bring her some
discarded credit card slips from the La Playa Hotel in Carmel, where
he worked in the housekeeping department.

Gabriel Maldonado later told police his ex-wife threatened to take
their 2 1/2-year-old daughter away to Michigan unless he got her the
credit card numbers. So he found 10 discarded slips and turned them
over to her in June.

Over the next few months, at stores from Carmel to Monterey to
Salinas, Maldonado spent thousands of dollars buying limited-edition
and ``retired'' Beanie Babies, such as the tie-dyed Jerry ``Garcia''
bear which now trades for about $200.

She would call the stores, order the toys and ask that they be boxed
up and ready to go when she arrived because she'd be in a hurry. She
gave her credit card number over the phone, then signed a slip at the
store and split with the loot.

But a bank notified one of the card holders that it had transferred
$1,700 from his savings account to checking to cover purchases on his
check debit card.

Phillip Emmons, a Monterey bartender, told police he had last used the
card to buy a $120 bottle of champagne at the La Playa Hotel in Carmel.

Police got on the trail, and eventually recovered 206 stolen Beanie
Babies. Most of them were kept in a Rubbermaid container in her bedroom.

Maldonado pleaded guilty to four counts of commercial burglary. In
addition to her jail sentence, which she may be allowed to serve on
home confinement, she was ordered to pay restitution to the victims.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry