RACO’s global positioning
corners Chitown crooks

Beverly Moss doesn’t deal with the Oak Lawn Police Department often.

Moss isn’t particularly familiar with the Illinois State Police, either, nor the Wisconsin State Patrol.

She is now, however, after a wild and wooly incident in which the small-company secretary tracked down a professional thief by coordinating a state-of-the-art vehicle tracking system with the various police agencies.

Moss works for Will County Board Up Inc., a suburban Chicago company that does what its name says it does: the boarding-up of windows and vacant buildings in Will County, Illinois. The company services facilities that have been deemed off-limits because the buildings have been abandoned, burglarized, neglected, set afire, etc.

Moss is an administrative assistant with Will County Board Up. She answers the phones, fields orders, schedules jobs and quotes estimates for customers. Prior to Aug. 19, 2002, her professional life was hectic, but fairly routine.

All that changed when Moss clocked in on that crazy, cop-filled Monday.

Moss and her co-workers had been alerted that morning by the Oak Lawn Police Department that one of the Will County Board Up Inc. vans had been stolen over the previous weekend.

The van had been parked at Fox Security & Audio in Cicero, Illinois, where it was to be outfitted with a new GPS Solutions device, a division of RACO Industries Inc. in Cincinnati (www.trackmyvehicle.com). The vehicle was one of five Will County Board Up vans that were being outfitted with a Model 300 L-Biz Tracker, part of RACO’s lineup of vehicle location devices that combine the power of GPS (global positioning systems) with wireless networking. The Model 300 allows unfettered vehicle monitoring throughout the U.S., allowing both individuals and professional dispatchers to monitor mobile assets more efficiently while providing an unprecedented level of safety, security and accountability.

Though the van installation had been slated for a Monday, Fox Security installers were running ahead of schedule and finished the job on the previous Saturday. The installers even left a note on the steering wheel, stating the installation was complete.

What happened next might make dirt look smart.

Brazen thieves worked their way inside the shop over that weekend, where they loaded up both the Will County Board Up van and a Fox Security car with thousands of dollars of stolen merchandise before making their getaway.

The scoundrels either didn’t know how to read, or missed the note in the van, because the GPS installation apparently didn’t faze them.

Unfortunately for Fox Security, their car wasn’t equipped with GPS Solutions.

Fortunately for Will County Board Up, their van was.

That’s when Beverly Moss got on the phone with Vicky Reilman, GPS Solutions Department Coordinator.

Working together, the two sudden sleuths first spotted the van in Evanston, on its way to Wisconsin. They then contacted the Illinois State Police, who said they couldn’t respond immediately, so the investigative duo waited until the van crossed into Wisconsin before contacting the Wisconsin State Patrol.

“After they crossed the Wisconsin border, it wasn’t five minutes before they were pulled over,” Moss said.

The suspect was charged with possession of a stolen motor vehicle and possession of stolen property.

It took Moss all of two hours, starting with that first call from the Oak Lawn Police Department, to locate the van, stop the vehicle and have the perpetrator arrested. Most vehicle thefts take months, if not years, to resolve. Some cases are never solved.

“We ended up getting the van three days later,” she said. Moss estimates the van is worth $25,000. The vehicle was still half-full of merchandise when the suspect was pulled over.

Will County Board Up discovered GPS Solutions, a division of RACO Industries (www.RACOIndustries.com), by searching the Internet. RACO Industries, a diversified data collection and high-tech resource firm, maintains at least 50 websites for its own products services while designing, maintaining and hosting several hundred more for clients.

Will County originally bought the GPS Solutions system to keep track of its trucks and employees. The company closed its sale with the RACO division just a few weeks before the debacle in Cicero. The equipment sold by RACO, a value-added reseller, is distributed by GPS Location Technologies in Fairfax, Va.

“We absolutely have to know where our employees are all the time, because a lot of what we do is last-minute, emergency service,” Moss said.