By Patrick Tepoorten

The Chisago County Sheriff's Office solved a series of burglaries in the Rush City area on Monday morning, after an alert deputy pulled over a suspicious vehicle around 4:30 a.m.

Over the last few months, J Graff and Associates had been the target of scrap metal thieves on multiple occasions. For awhile, the Sheriff's Office had the property staked out full time, but recently had scaled that surveillance back to part time.

Monday morning, Cpl. Scott Berg was on a routine patrol when he saw a suspicious mini van departing the industrial park area in Rush City. After following the vehicle south on I-35 for a while, he pulled the vehicle over and found evidence the two occupants, Mary Lou Bergquist, 43, South St. Paul, and Douglas Garhofer, 40, St. Paul, had burglarized J Graff very recently.

Subsequent to the discovery, the two suspects admitted to three burglaries of J Graff in the recent past.

The suspects were booked for felony theft and Garhofer was charged with possession of stolen property as well.