Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — With fingerprints, personal items and other evidence collected, investigators are closer to solving a February break-in at Rendezvous Saddle. Approximately $10,000 was stolen from a restaurant safe.

"The people who broke in and opened the safe obviously had knowledge of the employee areas of the building," Routt County Sheriff's Investigator Rachelle Redmond said.

Rendezvous Saddle, which is in the saddle of High Noon, includes the Rendezvous Saddle Cafeteria and Ragnar's fine dining restaurant. Approximately 80 employees work in the building during the winter.

Rendezvous Saddle is only accessible by skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, hiking, snowmobiling or sleigh ride. During the ski season, Ragnar's is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights for sleigh-ride dinners.

"We are pretty confident that they walked up and used a snowmobile to leave the mountain area," Redmond said. The snowmobile was found wrecked near the ski area's slope maintenance building, Redmond said.

Investigators believe two people were involved in the break-in, which happened between 11 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 27, and 3:30 a.m. Friday, Feb. 28.

A tool was apparently used to open the safe. The $10,000 stolen included $500 in quarters and cash in vinyl money bags. Most of the money bags were blue, some were red or green.

The evidence collected included fingerprints on the safe and items that can't be identified as belonging to the ski area and are likely personal effects belonging to the thieves. All evidence is being processed by the Colorado Bureau of Investigations.

Now that the snow is melting, the sheriff's office is asking residents to be on the lookout for any of the vinyl money bags that might have been discarded.

People with any information about the case are asked to call Rachelle Redmond at the Routt County Sheriff's Office, 879-1090, or call Routt County Crimestoppers at 870-8226.

Callers to Crime Stoppers do not have to reveal their names and may be eligible for a cash reward if their information helps solve the case.