GPS Helps Tulsa 'Yard Sheriff' Track Down Stolen Equipment

A GPS tracking system helped a Green Country lawn care service find thousands of dollars worth of stolen equipment.

Someone broke into the Yard Sheriff's Bixby warehouse early Tuesday morning and took off with a huge haul.

The Yard Sheriff has only been in its warehouse for about three months. The General Manager arrived at work Tuesday morning and discovered a truck, trailer and heavy equipment missing.

At the Yard Sheriff, his motto is keep your "lawn 'n order" by "busting the bad guys in your yard," but on Tuesday morning, his warehouse was the bad guy's target.

"We had one truck that was missing along with a 16-foot trailer and then on that trailer was one mower and a lot of hand equipment that we use daily," said Yard Sheriff General Manager Darrin DeShazer.

When DeShazer got to the warehouse, he noticed the garage door was cracked and someone had tampered with the lock on the back door.

"My heart dropped a little bit," DeShazer said. "That's a lot of equipment, a lot of money that was missing."

DeShazer explained the crook threw all this debris out of the trailer then loaded it with expensive tools and took off.

"As you can see, pulled one mower on the back, threw an air compressor on top of it," DeShazer said.

Luckily, all of the Yard Sheriff's trucks are equipped with GPS tracking devices. DeShazer said he quickly turned on his iPad and spotted his truck driving toward Coweta.

"When the police caught up to him, they took him down this back county road and he stirred up some dust," DeShazer said. "The police had to hang back and then once they kind of got up around the corner, the truck was in the middle of the road, door wide open."

The suspect was nowhere to be found. The thief dumped the trailer at a different location.

Police were able to recover some things, but important laptops are still missing.

"Not having those computers set us back on the scheduling. We're going to have to go to paper tickets in the meantime," DeShazer said.

The Yard Sheriff is about one week away from the start of his busy season. Managers are thankful one bad seed won't spoil this year's business.

DeShazer said it took about two hours for the police to track down the truck and trailer. The Yard Sheriff plans to install a security system.