UKIAH, CA., 6/22/26 — When push comes to shove — or shatter — downtown Ukiah business owners help each other.
Take earlier this month, when eight businesses found their windows smashed in the middle of the night. Rather than leaving the windows gaping open and businesses vulnerable, a pawn shop owner gathered a team and helped repair the damage.
The windows of a pawn shop, an herbal skincare shop and an empty unit on State Street were cracked or shattered earlier this month, along with four other businesses across the street.
Jeffrey Buckalew, 64, of Ukiah is suspected of smashing the windows in the early hours of June 13. According to police, Buckalew was arrested that morning on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing, felony use of a deadly weapon and felony defacement with damage or destruction of $400 or more.
Heidi Wyatt, co-owner of Craftsman Estate Jewelry and Pawn Shop, received a call from her security company at about 3 a.m. on June 13 and arrived to find the windows of her business and the shop next door destroyed, with holes in each window.
Next to Craftsman Estate sits Mama’s Medicinals, which sells CBD-based skincare products. The owners, Emily Held and Tim Poma, were camping out of town when their windows were smashed, they said.
After waking up to a barrage of calls and messages and walking to where he could get cell service, Poma got a call from police saying his building needed to be secured. Poma said the line stuck in his memory as akin to the police chatter in the opening of a Sublime song — “April 29th, 1992 (Miami)” — the soundbite from the ska punk song mentions busted windows and that the owner should come down here and “secure his business.”
Since they couldn’t be there, Held said Wyatt secured the buildings for both her own business and theirs.
“We wouldn’t have left their building open, we just took care of it,” said Wyatt, who described the damage as “gaping holes.”
Wyatt’s brother, who owns the shop with her, came with two others in the middle of the night with tools and supplies to board up the windows of both the pawn shop and the CBD shop. It took until 8:30 a.m. to board up the windows, and Wyatt said they didn’t see the damage to the other buildings until that morning.
“Heidi with the pawn shop was so kind, she found someone to board up our window in the middle of the night,” said Held, adding that it took hours to fix and involved reframing the windows, “not an easy job.”
They also had to do it from the outside because I couldn’t get anyone to give them a key.
A week later, Mama’s Medicinals window is still boarded up, with a paper sign hanging from the top that reads, “WE’RE OPEN Ignore the Window.”
Held said the temporary plywood wall isn’t helping business.
“Almost nobody comes in,” Held said.
She said there had been few customers in the downtown shop all week, but it’s a good thing they have an online shop that gets regular traffic.
“Financially, it’s hard,” said Held. “Luckily, we do online sales; we’re relying on that right now, because I think we’ve only had a couple customers the whole week.”
Wyatt said she was “really grateful nothing worse happened.”
No injuries were reported from the incident, and nothing was reported stolen from any of the businesses that were vandalized.