City Alerts Businesses as Copper Thieves Move to the Rooftops

Inside Sweet Red Peach, business went on. The trouble was on the roof.

Sometime in the small hours of Wednesday, July 15, thieves climbed onto the Arroyo Parkway bakery, stripped roughly half the copper from its air-conditioning unit and left it out of commission — forcing the shop to serve customers in 92-degree heat as an extreme heat wave gripped the region.

The break-in is one piece of a pattern Pasadena officials warned businesses about over the weekend.

“Within the past week, copper wire thefts have occurred from rooftop air conditioning units, often adding up to thousands of dollars in each incident,” Chief Communications Officer Lisa Derderian said in the release.

The new crimes mark a strategic change in a copper-theft wave that until now had mostly gone after the city’s streetlights.

At Sweet Red Peach in the 300 block of S. Arroyo Parkway, a technician estimated about $4,000 in copper was taken and said the unit — valued at roughly $11,000, according to NBC TV — would have to be replaced.

Co-owner Danny Griffin told ABC7 the hit came out of nowhere.

“It was the last thing in our mind to think that somebody would go on our roof and hit our specific AC unit and damage it to the point where it’s inoperable,” Griffin said.

Co-owner Kenyatta Glover put the toll more plainly.

“This just took us for a loop … I’ve been crying the last two days,” she told the station. “You have to smile to keep from crying, but it’s a lot, because we’re human. One can only take so much.”

The Petsadena Pet Hospital on South Raymond Avenue was also hit, the city said. Both businesses stayed open, leaning on portable air units and ice as unseasonable heat bore down.

The rooftop thefts are an escalation, not a new problem. Pasadena has logged copper losses since at least 2022; by early 2024, thieves had cut some six and a half miles of wire from the streetlight grid, and the city and Los Angeles County together posted a $20,000 reward. This spring, hundreds of feet more vanished from streetlight boxes.

The danger runs both ways, officials stress. Cutting live grounding lines or tampering with transformers can deliver a lethal shock, the city warned, and leaves exposed wire that can spark fires, create traffic hazards and shock utility crews and bystanders.

Businesses were urged to take a layered approach: restrict roof access, cage rooftop units, lock away ladders and install motion-triggered cameras.

Because many affected businesses are renters, the city also urged tenants to make landlords aware of the risk — rooftops being easy marks precisely because they sit out of sight.

Anyone with information on the thefts is asked to call the Pasadena Police Department at 626-744-4241.

For Griffin, the repair bill is only part of it.

“It’s just trying times, it just makes you think, ‘What’s next?'” he told ABC7.