Tipster Joe C., an employee at Skunkfunk, has given us news of a foiled robbery which took place at the clothing store at 1475 Haight St. on Wednesday evening.

Around 6:30 in the evening, he said, a man came into Skunkfunk, grabbed the cash register iPad and the entire cash drawer, and ran out. A local store manager, who asked that his store not be named in the incident, said he heard a Skunkfunk employee yelling, "Stop him, get him!" and followed the thief on foot towards the Panhandle.

Once at Ashbury and Oak and while waiting to cross the street, the culprit was spotted by another civilian on a skateboard. According to Joe C., the "unnamed 'Haight street kid,' who was following him from another direction, jumped off his long board and bashed the culprit in the head. The thief fell into the street."

The store manager and the street kid, whose name is unknown, recovered the stolen iPad and cash drawer and the money inside it. The drawer also contained employee W-2 forms. The thief ran across Oak and into the Panhandle, and was not apprehended.

Joe C. said that this came in the midst of a protracted effort by himself and a number of other shop owners on the block to curb retail thieves in the neighborhood.

It also comes in the midst of an effort by the San Francisco Police Department's Park Station to raise community support for continued funding for something called their "safe shopping" program, which uses grants to supply the retail corridor with additional beat cops, specifically during the holiday shopping season.

The local store manager who pursued the thief said that he "was someone I've never seen on the street before ... definitely not a street kid, definitely not a local." He said that even though "it's the street kids who're seen as part of the problem ... the reality is that it was a street kid who saved the day."