It wasn’t the way Judah Tyreman, 13, expected to start his Sunday morning.
“It was kind of shocking at first,” he said.
Judah and his sister Avi have been running Sesula Mineral and Gem Museum and Rock Shop since 2016 in the town of Radisson, northwest of Saskatoon.
When Judah arrived at the shop around 10 a.m. CT on March 11, he said he immediately knew something was wrong.
“There was some jewelry trailing out from the store, and the door was open,” he said. “It was trashed, it was looted.”
Judah would sell the jewelry out of the shop to help buy more items for his collection that’s taken more than two years to put together and features some impressive gems. A lot of the rarer items were donated by Steve Sesula himself.
Thieves made off with some of those rare minerals and rocks, including a large piece of green calcite, pink halite from the Mojave Desert, as well as a very rare piece of ocean jasper. They also stole the donation jar.
“There’s actually no more (ocean jasper) and we had a piece that was worth about $3,000,” Judah said.
In all, the Tyremans believe there was between $6,000 and $8,000 worth of goods stolen from the shop this weekend.
“At first I thought I didn’t lock it,” Judah said. “But there are some marks around the door where a crowbar was used to pry it open.”
RCMP are investigating the incident, and Judah said the case is being looked at as a major crime due to the worth of the stolen items.
Apparently, this weekend’s robbery wasn’t the first time the shop has been targeted, the family said signs used along the highway to advertise the shop have been stolen and vandalized many times in the past.
“I put these signs up every day out on the highway to show people I’m here in town so they can stop on in,” Judah explained. “After a while they were being taken down and thrown to the side; the day before the robbery, they were stolen.”
Despite the frightening ordeal, Judah isn’t ready to close up his shop just yet. Luckily, some of the more valuable items remained untouched during the robbery.
“We’ll still be open and everything, they didn’t steal everything,” he said.
Now, the community is coming together to help the 13-year-old boy. Royal Saskatchewan Museums offered to donate some of their duplicate samples to Jonah to put on display.
There is even a GoFundMe page set up to help with the lost donations.
While Judah hopes to get some of the rarer pieces back, he said he’s extremely grateful for all the help and support he’s received from across the province.