FORT MEADE, Md. -- A Minnesota-based Army recruiter recently helped police arrest four suspected shoplifters while shopping at a local mall with his 10-month-old daughter.
Staff Sgt. Sean Oliva had been pushing his daughter in a stroller Feb. 24 inside the Southdale Mall in Edina, a Minneapolis suburb, when he saw a group of suspicious men leave an electronics store with several boxes of headphones worth thousands of dollars.
Store employees, he said, told the four men to stop, but they walked away toward the mall's exit. Oliva said he pursued the men as the employees remained in the store to presumably call the police.
"I stayed at a safe enough distance, because I didn't know if they had weapons," said Oliva, the operations sergeant for the Minneapolis Army Recruiting Company.
Since the men were not running, Oliva was able to keep an eye on them the entire time without putting his daughter in harm's way, the father of two said.
But when the men exited the mall, Oliva thought they would get away. A friend of Oliva's then offered to watch his daughter while he and her husband followed the men out into the parking lot to get a vehicle description for police.
"I ended up getting my phone out and was able to get pictures of the vehicle's license plate and of the suspects," said Oliva, who has previously deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as a field artillery surveyor.
As the suspects' vehicle began to flee the scene, Oliva flagged down a nearby police patrol car and a brief chase ensued. Another patrol car quickly intervened, he said, and cut off the escape route for the suspects' car after it nearly hit two other moving vehicles in the parking lot.
Officers arrested four men aged 19 to 21 years old and charged them with felony shoplifting of nearly $4,300 worth of electronics, according to Edina police records. One of the men was also charged with another felony for fleeing from police in a motor vehicle.
Police later told Oliva the electronics store had recently been targeted by shoplifters several times before.
"It was just like a duty for me," Oliva said Monday. "Living the Army values is important to me. To be taught those values and to not intervene would have been going against them."
Oliva, who became a recruiter in 2012, also tries to assist local youth in finding their future career path whether it be in the Army or elsewhere.
"It's good to help others who either need direction or not sure what they want to do with their lives yet," the sergeant said. 'We kind of get to play a big role in helping them achieve their goals."
His company commander, Capt. Michael Beck, said he was proud of the sergeant's actions that day.
"More than anything, I think the fact that he's representing the Army values in a public setting really shows the type of character of all the Soldiers in the Army today," he said.
Many other people, Beck said, may not have done anything to help apprehend the suspects.
"I think more and more frequently there are people who are just comfortable with being bystanders," he said. "They don't necessarily feel comfortable for standing up for what's right.
"Sergeant Oliva didn't really hesitant. He saw the opportunity to do the right thing."
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