Garner restaurateur known for generosity victimized in home burglary

Those who know Angie Mikus say she is always helping others, using her Garner restaurant for the past three years to feed the homeless and just about anyone in need of a hot meal.

"I don't discriminate," Mikus said Tuesday.

The generosity leads to long hours at Angie's Restaurant on Garner Road – where she spent Saturday still cleaning two days after feeding Thanksgiving dinner to more than 400 customers, homebound senior citizens, a local women's shelter and even employees working the holiday at an urgent care center.

It was sometime between 5:30 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. the same day that someone went inside her home across town and stole a PlayStation, a laptop, a necklace, a house phone, a camera and her most valuable possessions – 10 years of photos stored on SIM memory cards.

"What they took from me I can never get back," Mikus said. "I don't mean just the pictures – what they've taken from me, as far as me being in my home and feeling safe or in this community and feeling safe."

Mikus is offering a $500 reward for information leading to an arrest in her case and an $800 reward for anyone who returns the memory cards with the photos.

"I don't care if they want to go through somebody else. I don't care how they do it," she said. "If they just return my SIM cards with the memories I have of my life, I would be glad."

It's something loyal customers are also hoping for – customers such as George Morris who have directly benefited from Mikus' kindness.

This past summer, she cooked and delivered meals to Morris while he was in the hospital. After hearing about what happened Saturday, he went out and bought Mikus a new phone.

"It's very disheartening," Morris said. "I can't imagine someone wanting to steal from her as good as she is. She feeds a lot of people who can't afford to eat, and I'm not talking about just Thanksgiving and holidays. I'm talking about on a daily basis."

"This really makes me sad," one person wrote. "Sorry that it happened to such a wonderful person."

Unlike two other burglaries in Mikus' neighborhood, there was no forced entry into her home, leading her to wonder if she might have been targeted.

"I worry if it is somebody I know. I hate to think that," she said. "I try not to think of that."

Three weeks ago, someone broke into her car that was parked in her driveway. Among the items stolen were a set of house keys she had recently had copied.

Despite both crimes, Mikus said she refuses to be a victim.

"It bothers me, and they've stolen some pretty precious stuff from me, but I want to do whatever we can to make people more aware of what is going on in our community to make our community a safer place to be," she said.

Nor will the burglaries deter her from continuing spreading kindness to others.

"I'm not going to let the bad of somebody else ruin what I try to do," she said. "If that's the case, they won."