Dibs

Like a spider sucking away the bodily contents of its prey, Sara Jane Gutierrez stole nearly a thousand books from public libraries in Greeley, Colorado and sold them to a local secondhand store. Twenty years old and pregnant, Gutierrez pleaded guilty to theft and forgery in May and was sentenced this week to three years of probation and 120 hours of community service, according to the Vail Daily. Over many months, she obtained library cards under seventeen different false names, using other people’s discarded magazines and mail to apply for the cards, according to her arrest affidavit. With the possible help of accomplices, she then used the cards to check out over 800 books — worth around $30,000, according to Weld Library District officials. Using ten different false names, she then sold the books for around $8,500 to Hastings Books, Music & Video in Greeley. “A Hastings store manager would not allow his name to be used for comment about the store’s book-buying program,” according to the Vail Daily, which adds: “Greeley police have a warrant for a co-defendant, David Michael Garcia, 24, who Gutierrez told police was her boyfriend. The two would use bleach and glue to ‘clean’ the library books so they could be sold… Gutierrez was part of an apparent ring of people who fraudulently checked out the books and sold them back…. When she showed up for an evaluation by the probation department, Gutierrez tested positive for meth and marijuana…. She will have to complete parenting classes, substance abuse treatment and a mental health evaluation as part of her sentence.” So the next time you’re on the checkout line at your local library behind a panting, sweaty, wild-eyed figure who reeks of pot and is clutching six hefty art books, Ann Coulter’s Godless, Noam Chomsky’s Failed States, plus the entire ouevre of Beatrix Potter, your suspicions will probably be entirely correct.