OAKLAND - SF Chronicle -Jim Herron Zamora


Police are looking for some robbers who hoped to be flashing golden smiles.

Five masked robbers burst into a jewelry store specializing in trendy gold teeth in downtown Oakland on Tuesday, held one of the owners at knifepoint, smashed display cases and made off with $15,000 worth of teeth and dentures, police said.

Other than the missing dental ornaments, police have few clues about who is behind the robbery of JC Jewelry at 1940 Broadway.

The crime was captured on surveillance camera, but all of the robbers were wearing masks, said one of the store's co-owners, a husband-and-wife team who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

The incident began at about 3:45 p.m. when the five men dashed into the store and put a knife to the throat of the female co-owner while her husband was working upstairs.

The other four smashed display cases and emptied them of jewelry. The thieves were running away as the second co-owner came downstairs.

"They were very fast,'' he said. "They knew what they wanted and took it all."

JC Jewelry in Oakland is one of three Bay Area stores with the same name that deal almost exclusively in the gold tooth caps first popularized by rappers in the late 1990s.

The owners keep no cash on hand and said that previous robberies have been much smaller because the items are spread among six separate locked display cases.

The owner said the thieves must find jewelers and dentists willing to custom-fit the special teeth caps into the mouths of the robbers or their prospective buyers. The teeth and denture sets cost from $500 to several thousand dollars.

"If some guy walks in with all these teeth, it's going to be pretty suspicious to anyone,'' the owner said.

The gold caps have caught the eye of criminals in Oakland before.

Five years ago, an assailant snatched a 15-year-old boy who was riding a bicycle and punched him in the mouth.

The blow knocked out the youth's gold teeth, and the bandit made off with them, police said.
[Edited 12/2/04 9:34am]

Nothin says "Merry Christmas" like a new 'gangsta grill'!

i'm about two cups of coffee away from making a really good Flava Flav joke here.

That is really sad. What is the world coming to when teeth are being stolen. Can you imgine the thieves discussing the plan.

Nila said:

There are thieves at the dentist tonight.

superspaceboy said:

That's funny.