Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

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On Sept. 23, Rebecca Dameron stopped to shop at the Ridgewood Farms Kroger supermarket on Virginia 419 in Salem.

An avid recycler, she cruised the aisles with an open-topped, cloth tote bag rather than one of the grocery carts or plastic baskets the store provides. Near the back of the store, a security man in plain clothes approached her and said, "Excuse me, ma'am, you're concealing items."

He was quickly joined by another plainclothes security man.

Dameron, who lives on Bent Mountain, explained that she was a recycler who used the bag without problems in other stores, including a Kroger on Brambleton Avenue in Southwest Roanoke County, where she usually shops.

The security men asked for her identification. She provided it. They escorted her to the front of the store to meet a female assistant manager.

Upstairs, in the store's office, she was questioned, and someone called the Salem police, Dameron said in an account she sent to the grocery chain's regional office in Roanoke and corporate headquarters in Cincinnati.

Character references

In an effort to quell suspicion, Dameron suggested - among other things - that someone call the Kroger where she usually shops, or Roanoke Natural Foods, where she is a working member and where tote use is routine.

Instead, she was photographed with a Polaroid camera, "forced" to sign a document barring her from "any Kroger owned or leased property" and sent away with a Salem police officer - who promptly released her, saying he had no reason to charge her, she said.

Dameron didn't know it then, but the store's security staff acted legally under Virginia's concealment law. It also was legal for them to apprehend her, a suspected shoplifter, before she left the store.

Kroger's security team didn't know it then, but Dameron, 45, was no dimwitted criminal.

She is a former Methodist minister who is now a Quaker, a volunteer cardiac technician for the Bent Mountain Fire Department and Rescue Squad and the owner of SimpliFine, an organizing service for businesses and individuals.

Bruce Phlegar, manager of Roanoke Natural Foods, confirmed that Dameron is a working member there.

"She's great," he said. "She's reliable. She's decent and honest. I like her personally. She's been a good asset."

Phlegar also said that shopping with tote bags is "a common thing here."

Dameron said she related the story so others can avoid what she went through.

A settlement of sorts

In her letter, Dameron wrote that the Kroger manager and the store's security service "violated my psyche, humiliated me, unlawfully detained me and defamed me in front of a store full of customers and employees."

She outlined strict conditions before she would consider the matter closed, including a written apology, removal of the ban against her and having a Kroger executive "publicly apologize to me" at the Ridgewood Farms store.

That brought a conversation with Tony Caputo, the risk manager for Kroger's mid-Atlantic marketing area of some 134 stores in six states.

In his follow-up letter, Caputo told her he was sorry to hear about the incident, that he had asked the store manager to rescind the trespassing form and had discussed her remarks about discourtesy with the management and security staff.

Dameron's other demands were "very difficult and time-consuming," Caputo told me Thursday. The company already feels it has gone above and beyond.

In his letter, he asked her to use the store's carts or baskets, and told her to "feel free" to use her bags after passing through the checkout lanes.

"To try and keep her as a customer and to appease her, we did offer a $50 gift certificate and a welcome back to any Kroger store," he told me.

Dameron sent the certificate back and started buying her groceries exclusively at Food Lion and Roanoke Natural Foods.

The incident has left her with a bad taste, but she probably will return to her Kroger on Brambleton eventually.

"I like my Kroger," she said. "My Kroger is great."

Caputo said this was an isolated incident resulting from "very unusual circumstances."

He also said, "When we make mistakes, we admit to them."

Dameron said she is grateful for at least two things: the support of her friends; and "the awareness of how it feels not to be believed."