Steamboat Pilot & Today

A metal safe containing as much as $2,000 in cash was stolen from the Chief Plaza Theater on Lincoln Avenue early Sunday morning, police said.

Capt. Joel Rae of the Steamboat Springs Police Department said the safe was kept in a small room near the theater's projection room. The gray, metal safe measured 2 feet on all sides.

"It looks like it was a fairly heavy safe," Rae said. "It's unclear to me whether one person would be able to lift it or not. It's not just a welded-together piece of tin."

The burglar, or burglars, broke an 18-by-18-inch glass window to enter the projection room. The window is high above the floor at the rear of Theater 4, where the comedy "Yours, Mine and Ours" is playing.

To reach the window, the burglar or burglars would have had to climb above the entrance to that theater. A strip of cloth is torn from the wall above the entrance.

The safe was inside a locked room in the projection room. The entire safe was removed from the theater, Rae said.

The safe is valued at $600.

The theft occurred between 12:50 and 10:15 a.m. Sunday, police said.

Theater manager Noah Slauson was not available for comment Monday evening.

Rae said the theft is under investigation and surprising in nature.

"We haven't had a burglary of a business downtown for quite awhile," he said, citing a "rash" of cases about a year ago as the most recent he can remember.

Those cases, he said, include four burglaries of the Backcountry Provisions sandwich shop on Lincoln Avenue that occurred within four months of one another, and a burglary of the City Cafe in Centennial Hall.

As far as thefts of large, money-containing objects such as a safe, Rae said the most recent he can recall is the theft of an ATM machine from The Tugboat Grill & Bar about two years ago.

-- To reach Mike Lawrence, call 871-4203

or e-mail mlawrence@steamboatpilot.com