DAMAGE ASSESSMENT: BURGLARS VANDALIZE PATRICK'S CLEANERS

A wedding dress that used to be white was placed on the top of a pile of smoke-damaged clothes Saturday after an early morning fire destroyed most of the clothes at a Cape Girardeau cleaners.

"She was going to pick it up on Monday," said David Kimes, owner of Patrick's Cleaners at 1215 Broadway.

Burglars broke into Kimes' store overnight, using his office window as an entry point. Once inside, they went wild.

Using a wooden-handled ballpeen hammer left at a clothes press by an employee, the vandals smashed machinery, toilets and glass throughout the building.

"We don't have a bathroom any more," Kimes said.

Food was pulled from the refrigerator and scattered throughout the 3,600 square-foot building.

But most of the damage came when clothes were taken from racks, piled in the middle of the floor, and set on fire.

Kimes estimates that more than 80 percent of the clothes in his store were burned up.

At this point, Kimes said he can only guess at the amount of damage. He said he wouldn't be surprised if it was over $100,000.

Firefighters responded after a police officer smelled smoke while driving near Broadway shortly before 2:30 a.m., said Mark Hasheider, a battalion chief with the Cape Girardeau Fire Department.

The fire itself wasn't difficult, he said. Firefighters entered through the front door and a side door and put it out fairly quickly.

"You had all the clothes piled up in the center of the room, so it was not as much of a threat to the rest of the building," Hasheider said.

Police reported finding the hammer used by vandals down the street, Kimes said. It had been tossed through the window of Courtesy Cleaners at 1107 Broadway.

Kimes spent most of Saturday organizing a clean-up effort and trying to salvage the clothes that remained.

After he determines the level of damage to presses and other equipment, Kimes said he will know when he can reopen.

Everything was damaged by smoke, he said, so Kimes won't quibble with anyone who wants their clothes replaced by insurance.

Some customers came looking for their clothes Saturday, he said.

"One woman was looking through the clothes on hangers," Kimes said. "She said she was trying to find her husband's shirt."

Patrick's Cleaners receives between 200 and 300 items of clothing a day, he said, and many customers had a large part of their wardrobes in the store.

An accountant who purchases his shirts in England at $150 each had 30 pieces for cleaning. Fifteen of those were suits. "And he doesn't buy his clothes at a discount store," Kimes said.

Kimes lost most of his own clothes in the fire, he said.

The cost of many clothes will be harder to determine.

"It's hard to put a value on a $300 wedding dress, because to someone it's worth much more than that," he said.