Times have changed. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid usually rode in, robbed the place, guns at the ready, and left with the loot, smiling all the way down the trail. They had a business plan.
Monday evening, about 9 p.m., the One Stop Grocery at Mile 5.4 on the Kenai Spur Highway had a different kind of robber. He didn't even get away with his self-esteem.
Consider the scene: the store is packed with regular customers, a food delivery is taking place, and people are gassing their cars at the pump. Needless to say, the manager and all the clerks are busy.
A man walks into the liquor side entrance of the store and says, "Everybody freeze, nobody move. You know what that means." Unlike Cassidy and Sundance, nobody really bothered to listen.
"I didn't pay much attention to him," Mike Ellis, the evening manager said. "He wasn't a regular customer or a person I'd ever seen before.
"Having people occasionally being a bit boisterous on the liquor side of the store is not uncommon. Everyone kind of ignored him. We were busy."
According to Ellis, the would-be robber went to the cooler, took some beer and said, "You people don't understand. I really mean it."
"I left him at the counter," Ellis said. "He got more boisterous, louder and he had his hand in his pocket."
Looking back on it, Ellis said, "He was one of the world's dumbest criminals."
The man apparently left the counter, and Ellis said he walked over to where the man was in the store to check on a piece of equipment and looked him in the eye.
Ellis said the man never showed a weapon, just kept his hand in his pocket.
"I didn't even take him serious until three-quarters of the way through (the robbery attempt) because he was on the alcohol side. If he would have been on the grocery side, I would have hit 911 immediately.
"Different conditioning," Ellis said.
Even the customers didn't take the robber seriously. One of them is reported to have told the man that he could get in trouble talking like that.
"It's usually pretty calm here. That was an event," Ellis said.
Finally, Ellis did hit the 911 button.
The man got tired of being ignored, and, according to Ellis, shouted expletives, complained that nobody was listening to him and left.
The man drove away in a black vehicle in the direction of Soldotna.
"He didn't get anything but a headache -- not even the beer," Ellis said.
According to the Kenai Police Department, the man is 40 to 50 years old with a mustache and shoulder-length dark hair with a mix of gray.
He is about 5-feet, 11-inches tall, with a medium build and was wearing jeans and a light-colored shirt, possibly plaid.
Ellis said he thought the man weighed about 140 to 150 pounds and was fairly well built.
"He didn't strike me as an alcoholic. He was nervous and agitated," Ellis said. "He may just have been having a bad day."
Kenai police, Alaska State Troopers and the Soldotna Police Department all became involved in the attempted robbery. The store was closed for about two hours between 8 and 10 p.m. for interviews and investigations.
The man has yet to be apprehended, but evidence is being gathered and the case is under investigation, according to Kenai Police Lt. Jeff Kohler.
