Meat shop owner surprised, grateful after late father’s cash register returned after winter robbery

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This article was published 13/05/2025 (470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Months after thieves broke into a North End meat shop and stole a priceless family heirloom, sparking a community-wide search, a Good Samaritan has returned it to its rightful owners.

The vintage cash register had long sat behind Tenderloin Meat and Sausage’s window, a tribute to Walter Klopick, the late patriarch of the family business. When the glass was shattered and the empty register was stolen in late February, son and current owner Christian Klopick was devastated and took to social media in an effort to find it.

But as the weeks passed, he gave up hope of ever finding it.

Friday afternoon, a man walked into the store, dragging a pull cart covered with a tarp, and told the staff he had something of theirs.

They were shocked to see the register — banged-up and missing its cash drawer, but otherwise intact.

“I thought it was gone forever,” Klopick said Tuesday.

The man did not offer his name or any information about himself, and Klopick said he didn’t ask for a reward, but took $100 the staff gave him as thanks.

“He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, and just said he knew that this was ours, and he wanted to make sure that it got returned,” he said.

The store has been inundated with well-wishes and tips on how to repair the damage to the register, and for that Klopick is grateful.

“It’s kind of sad to look at right now, but we will eventually get it fixed,” he said.

It’s a happy ending, but the constant crime concerns persist — Klopick said the store at Main Street and Landsdowne Avenue deals with a break-in, an attempted break-in or a shoplifting incident at least once a month.

Shoplifting has spiked recently, thieves running out the door with armfuls of frozen meat.

“It really is disheartening. I’ve never seen anything like this in the soon-to-be 40 years that we’ve been in business on Main Street here,” Klopick said.

Data from a Winnipeg Police Service report released last week found that the city’s crime rate dropped in 2024, but showed a spike in shoplifting, which is being attributed to an increase in enforcement.

“We expected to see a spike, and we did. The hope is that you’ll see that spike and then, when those resources are scaled back, you’ll see that trend down because we had an impact,” Cam Mackid, the Winnipeg police’s deputy chief of investigations, said at the time.

Police reported 8,553 shoplifting incidents in 2024, with most of the items worth less than $5,000, a 40.8 per cent increase from 2023.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca