Pod Insights The Sporkful Cold Case: Office Fridge Food Theft Edition (Reheat) About this episode It’s Elkhart, Indiana, 2001. Two inches of Heather Coleman's turkey club disappear from her office fridge. The thief is nowhere to be found. And Heather’s life will never be the same. In this tribute to the hit podcast Serial, we investigate the shocking true story of an office fridge food theft.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dan Pashman? There's nothing quite like Aruba. The white sand beaches are truly unlike anything you've seen. But what really stands out is the food. Because Aruba's not like other Caribbean islands. French pastries, Spanish paella, Peruvian barbecue, papardelle that has no business being that good that far from Florence. Not to mention the local fair. Aruba's food scene pulls you in with its astonishing variety of cuisines and beyond satisfies you with its unexpected flavors. So plan your escape to culinary delight at aruba.com. Your taste buds will thank you. Start the day strong with Quaker protein products. Quaker makes it easy and delicious to get a good source of protein. No matter what the day has in store, Quaker protein products give you a variety of ways to reach your protein goals.
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1:02 Speaker 01 Sirius XM Podcasts.
1:10 Dan Pashman? Hey, this is Dan here with another Sporkful reheat for you. And I am especially excited because this is one of my all time favorite Sporkful episodes. Top five for sure. And this one is a little different. It is a little silly. It is a little weird. It's a parody, a satire of the hit podcast Serial. Remember it was like the first viral podcast that sort of launched the true crime podcast genre? And I decided I wanted to do a parody of Serial in which we investigated a food related true crime story. And let me tell you, we found a doozy. And this was back when I did the show at WNYC, when Anne Sannie produced the show with me. You'll also hear her in this episode. And I think you're going to find it's a gripping tale.
1:54 Dan Pashman? As always, if you have a certain Sporkful episode you want us to reheat, drop me a line. Tell me your first name, your location, what episode you want to hear and why. Shoot that to hello at sporkful.com. Thanks and enjoy.
2:12 Speaker 02 This is a Global Call Link prepaid call from...
2:16 Speaker 03 Heather Coleman. Why not eat the whole sandwich?
2:19 Speaker 04 And this was not about food whatsoever. This was about sex.
2:22 Speaker 03 It all accommodated with me going slightly insane.
2:26 Dan Pashman? This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
2:38 Dan Pashman? For the last month, I've spent every working day trying to figure out where a third of a sandwich went, one fall day in 2001. Or, if you want to get technical about it, apparently I do, where a third of a six-inch sub at a call center in Elkhart, Indiana, went, one fall day in 2001. This search sometimes feels undignified on my part. I've had to ask about teenagers' sex lives. Where? How often? With whom? Didn't have anything to do with the sandwich. I was just curious. Before I get into why I've been doing this, I just want to point out something I never really thought about before I started working on this story. And that is, it's really hard to account for your meals. In a detailed way, I mean. What did you have for lunch last Wednesday? Soup? Salad? Sandwich? Was the bread soggy?
3:20 Dan Pashman? Are you sure? The entire day, name every single thing you ate. It's hard. Here's the case I've been working on.
3:28 Speaker 03 I totally remember the very first time that I noticed my food was missing. And that was a Schlotzsky's personal pizza.
3:37 Dan Pashman? This is Heather Coleman. Right off the bat, I want you to know that the story she's about to tell is a true story. Seriously, it's a true story. In the fall of 2001, she was working at a call center in Elkhart, Indiana. She worked long shifts, so she'd often buy a big meal for lunch, eat half, and put the rest in the office fridge for dinner.
3:54 Speaker 03 So my dinner shift comes up, and I'm looking forward to this pizza, of all things. I open it, and one slice is missing. Just one.
4:03 Dan Pashman? Heather wrote it off. Lots of people in the office ordered from Schlotzsky's. Maybe it was an honest mistake. Turned out, it was just the beginning.
4:11 Speaker 03 The six-inch sub.
4:14 Speaker 03 That's the one that nailed it. It was pretty obvious when a six-inch sub that was definitely six inches, when you open it up and there's only four inches left. And I was just like, what the heck is going on?
4:28 Dan Pashman? What kind of sandwich was it?
4:30 Speaker 03 Um, I believe it was a club sandwich. Yeah, the mayo, the mustard, all the good stuff.
4:36 Dan Pashman? It had bacon on it?
4:37 Speaker 03 It wouldn't be a proper sandwich if it didn't have bacon on it.
4:41 Dan Pashman? What about cheese? You a cheese-on-the-club-sandwich person or no cheese?
4:44 Speaker 03 I am one of those people who do believe that cheese does make everything better. That's a fact. Inarguable.
4:53 Dan Pashman? Heather tried to fight back. She left threatening notes. It didn't help. She hid her food behind the salad dressing. The thief still found it. She even put a sandwich in Tupperware and wrapped the whole container in duct tape. The thief cut through the duct tape. And each time, only to take a piece of the food, not the whole thing. That's a part I can't figure out. It's one of the things about this case that kind of bobs above the water for me. Like a disturbing buoy.
5:18 Speaker 03 God. Uh, it's even hard to even talk about it today. It hurts that much. Sitting in my cubicle, unwrapping it, thinking, okay. You know, like, I totally outsmarted my food thief. I am so genius. So I open it, I look at it, same friggin' thing. One-third gone. And it just sat there looking at that ridiculous sandwich. And I felt like a loser.
5:49 Dan Pashman? And did you eat the sandwich?
5:51 Speaker 03 No, no, that's, that, that's, I don't know what's wrong with you. You don't eat that sandwich.
5:56 Dan Pashman? It was only touched by a knife. It wasn't touched by...
5:59 Speaker 03 But it wasn't...
6:00 Dan Pashman? A mouth.
6:01 Speaker 03 Cut perfectly. So, you know, there were hands all over it. My bread was, my bread was manipulated and molested. I couldn't eat that.
6:12 Dan Pashman? Heather went to a woman named Cheryl in HR and broke down crying in front of her. Cheryl didn't seem all that concerned. She put a note up on the office fridge reminding people not to eat other people's food, but it didn't help. The thefts continued on and off for months. Eventually Heather stopped putting stuff in the fridge altogether. She only ate non-perishable food she could keep at her desk, things like canned beef stew. Yeah, I know. Brutal. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out if Heather was being targeted, singled out. She says she didn't know for sure whether there were others. She does say there seemed to be better food in the fridge that wasn't getting stolen, things like homemade mac and cheese. Heather casually asked other people around the office if their food had been taken, but nobody spoke up. She says she didn't want to make a big deal of it.
6:57 Dan Pashman? It was her first real office job out of college. She already felt like she stuck out because she's Asian in a very white town. She didn't want to rock the boat. But more than anything, she didn't speak up because she felt ashamed.
7:08 Speaker 03 I couldn't even protect my own sandwich. I mean, what type of person can't protect their own sandwich? And I couldn't. No matter what I did, I could not outsmart that thief. You know, who do I go to? There is no crisis hotline for office food thievery. Food is so personal. Like, for example, if someone used up, like, all my Kleenex or all my Post-its, I would just go get another one and it would be no big deal. But the touching of my food, I really felt violated. And that's when we start eating. And so, the starvation, the violation, the anger, it all accommodated with me going slightly insane. Really, really insane.
7:53 Dan Pashman? I wanted to put together a list of suspects, and for that, I thought I needed to understand this food thief a little better. I reached out to Baron Ambrosia, culinary ambassador to the Bronx and host of the Cooking Channel show, The Culinary Adventures of Baron Ambrosia. Baron himself is an admitted food thief. In one episode of his show, he ends up in a pull-up contest with rap legend Melly Mel after swiping two pies from a neighbor. I filled him in on Heather's situation and asked him for his take on the culprit.
8:21 Speaker 04 This is not a crime of hunger. I was caught stealing a pie once, as you well know, but I took the whole pie. And I ate the whole pie. Never once would I take a portion of something. You know, and the things that I would steal... Most of the time would be outrageously delicious. What you're telling me here, a sandwich. What's it, a tuna sandwich?
8:47 Dan Pashman? A turkey club.
8:47 Speaker 04 A turkey club, okay. We know what a turkey club tastes like.
8:52 Dan Pashman? So you don't think that it's a crime of hunger? It's not a crime of culinary curiosity? It's not like I must try this amazing food? So what do you think it is?
9:03 Speaker 04 No, I mean, it's none of these things. If you look at all the facts. This is mediocre food. This person was very controlled. This person was very methodical. And this was not about food whatsoever. This was about sex. This is about intimacy. This person, what they're doing is literally like two steps above sniffing someone's chair. This is not, oh, oh, I want a little sack. And I feel a sense of entitlement and I'm going to come in here and be the, you know, the sandwich bully. It's not that. It's certainly, it's fetishistic. This is absolutely fetishistic.
9:41 Dan Pashman? From there, I went back to Heather to get her thoughts on potential suspects.
9:44 Speaker 03 So in my head, I was thinking like one or two of the guys that I knew there that were, you know, just out of college as well. And they ate like pigs and ate a lot. So I just assumed it was one of the dudes. They would have eaten the whole thing. I mean, even now, I cannot believe that somebody eats. Why not eat the whole sandwich?
10:09 Dan Pashman? Right. The whole thing just feels very calculating.
10:12 Speaker 03 Yes.
10:13 Dan Pashman? I asked Heather, does Cheryl from HR fit the profile? Should she be on the list of suspects?
10:18 Speaker 03 The thing is, at the time, I totally didn't think so because Cheryl was really kind and the way her office was positioned, she'd have to come down the stairs, which would have been close to my desk. And so I would have spotted her. So.
10:35 Speaker 03 Logic tells me it couldn't be Cheryl.
10:38 Dan Pashman? Well, let's not dismiss her quite so quickly. We gotta pad this story out a little bit longer, Heather. So we have Cheryl, the HR woman.
10:45 Speaker 03 Well, she does have opportunity.
10:46 Dan Pashman? Okay, right, and she has some authority.
10:49 Speaker 03 Yes, and she was dismissive of my complaint of my
10:52 Dan Pashman? Right.
10:52 Speaker 03 food violation.
10:53 Dan Pashman? Which is questionable. We have the frat boys, who are hungry and probably selfish.
10:59 Speaker 03 Exactly.
11:00 Dan Pashman? Next possibility is Heather has gone insane and is stealing her own food and doesn't realize it.
11:05 Speaker 03 Exactly.
11:06 Dan Pashman? Then is there anyone else? And let's continue to look through suspects. Is there, let's say, let's call him a Mr. McGuffin.
11:14 Speaker 03 Well, there is a person that could be Mr. McGuffin.
11:17 Dan Pashman? Okay, who's that?
11:18 Speaker 03 It was my direct supervisor at the time.
11:21 Dan Pashman? Heather says Mr. McGuffin was a middle-aged guy who was kind of bitter about his job. Meanwhile, she's this kid right out of college who keeps getting promoted. She's about to leapfrog him on the corporate ladder. She says there was tension between them as a result. That sounds to me like a motive. And she says there were other clues.
11:38 Speaker 03 The fact that his lunch was always after mine? I was looking at people's lunch schedules for a while. Being in a call center, every minute of your time is logged.
11:49 Dan Pashman? That's right, there were call logs. Mr. McGuffin made calls at 3:21 to Jen, 3:32 to Nisha, 3:42 to a dude named Phil, and 3:59 to Patrick. There are three calls on the call log around this time that all ping towers near Kathy's apartment: 6:07, 6:09, and 6:24. The first two calls are for a little less than a minute. The third call is the longest, 4 minutes 15 seconds. Are you following all of this? Then there are some stray things about Mr. McGuffin that, eh, I don't know what they mean. Or if they mean much of anything. But I'm gonna tell you about them in case. Worst comes to worst, we fill another 20 seconds of the show. Here goes. Number one, when he was 12, Mr. McGuffin may or may not have lied to one of his teachers.
12:32 Dan Pashman? Number two, Mr. McGuffin sometimes goes streaking in the woods. And number three, Mr. McGuffin's favorite food is red herring.
12:48 Speaker 05 Coming up on The Sporkful.
12:50 Speaker 06 I mean, it seems like, yeah, it could be done, but it seems far-fetched.
12:53 Speaker 02 So I just wonder where her little perspective of reality is sometimes.
12:58 Speaker 03 I lost it. I had no way of holding back this, like, burrito anger I had running through my veins.
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16:42 Dan Pashman? Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. You ever like go to our show page in your podcasting app and you're scrolling back and you're like, oh, that, that seems like a good episode. Why, how did I miss that? Well, you, you missed it because you're probably not following our show in your podcasting app. And it's really important that you do. So please do this right now. Go to our show page in your podcasting app of choice. If it's Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you click follow. Other apps, maybe it's a plus sign or a heart or a favorite or the word subscribe, whatever it is in your app. It's really important that you click it. That way you won't miss great episodes. Super quick and easy. You can do it right now. Thank you so much. Now, back to this week's reheat.
17:21 Dan Pashman? Okay, returning to True Crime Podcaster Voice, let's get back into it.
17:28 Dan Pashman? Earlier in the show, we raised the possibility that Heather had gone insane and was actually stealing food from herself. Well, to be precise, she raised the possibility when she said, quote, "It all culminated with me going slightly insane." This topic comes up a lot when you talk to Heather. So I talked to her friend Kelly. Kelly says Heather is really nice, funny, sweet, a great person. They didn't know each other back when all the food stealing was happening. I asked Kelly if she had ever seen signs that Heather might be out of touch with reality.
17:56 Speaker 02 Well, we both have dogs, and I'm always feeding my dog treats, and she's always putting her dog on a diet and telling me that her dog's chubby and my dog is cute. And my dog is a little bit chubby, but hers is not as chubby. So I just wonder where her little perspective of reality is sometimes.
18:25 Dan Pashman? So there's that. For just a minute, let's put aside the question of whether it's psychologically possible Heather was stealing food from herself. Let's look at whether it was physically possible. Like, could she have pulled it off? Heather says it took two minutes to get from her desk to the lunchroom. Then she'd have to remove a sandwich, slice a piece off, put the rest back, and get back to her desk. That's not much time.
18:46 Speaker 03 I don't think I could even do it. If I go there and, like, see aside it, like, sat at a desk, did a quick run-through, did it, I don't think I could have completed the act in that timeframe.
18:57 Dan Pashman? Gauntlet's so thrown, producer Anne Sannion and I gave it a shot.
19:03 Dan Pashman? All right, we're in a corner of the WNYC newsroom, the farthest possible point from the lunchroom.
19:09 Speaker 06 Right.
19:10 Dan Pashman? And that's where Heather said she sat, the farthest possible spot.
19:12 Speaker 06 Right, right.
19:13 Dan Pashman? And she said she worked with about 75 people. There's about 75 people who work on this floor.
19:17 Speaker 06 Yeah, I think that's a fair estimate.
19:19 Dan Pashman? So this is basically exactly the same.
19:21 Speaker 06 Right.
19:21 Dan Pashman? You got the stopwatch?
19:22 Speaker 06 I have the stopwatch.
19:24 Dan Pashman? Hit it. All right, we're walking to the lunchroom. Now, we gotta walk briskly, like we're in a rush, but not-
19:30 Speaker 06 But not too rushed.
19:31 Dan Pashman? Right, we don't want to attract attention. Hey, Brooke. Hey, Dan. Nothing to see here. Hey, Dubner. Dan. Is that Lakshmi Singh? No, no.
19:43 Speaker 06 Ooh, there's a shrimp sale at that crab crib.
19:46 Dan Pashman? Sometimes I think Anne isn't listening to me. Alright, we're entering the lunchroom. We got to the kitchen.
19:50 Speaker 06 Alright, 37 seconds.
19:51 Dan Pashman? Took out my half a sub, sliced off a piece, ate it, put the rest back. Then I took it out again and ate some more because it was good. Then I put it away again and raced back to where Heather would have sat. Okay, Anne, how long?
20:04 Speaker 06 Alright, we are at 1 minute 59 seconds.
20:08 Dan Pashman? Huh.
20:09 Speaker 06 I mean, it seems like, yeah, it could be done, but it seems far-fetched.
20:15 Dan Pashman? Here's what I take away from my conversation with Kelly and the test Anne and I ran. I don't think Heather's insane. I just don't. I think her reaction to all this is pretty understandable. I've heard and seen her demonstrate normal human emotion towards me, like when she talks about the pain of losing all those sandwiches. But on all the other options, it's a toss-up. Could she have just accidentally misplaced her food over and over again? It's possible. Could she have made up the whole story just to get on this podcast? It's possible. Could all of human existence actually just be a dream in the mind of a giant space turtle? I asked my magic eight ball and the answer was, "Ask again later."
20:55 Dan Pashman? Back at the call center, Heather was keeping her head down and avoiding the communal fridge. Weeks went by. She hadn't moved on, she was trying to stay focused on her work. Then came the burrito. She got promoted again, and a group of supervisors took her out for lunch to celebrate. They went to a place with really big, amazing burritos. Heather ate half of hers and got the rest wrapped up. She put it in the office fridge. Before she went home for the day, she went to grab it.
21:21 Speaker 03 It was a travesty. The wrapper was just torn open. The burrito itself was mangled. And I'm saying mangled as in like, a rabid dog went through it.
21:35 Dan Pashman? Worst of all for Heather, only the chicken had been removed. The rest was left laying there, splayed open like a carcass on the savanna.
21:42 Speaker 03 I haven't felt that kind of anger since like, the Cubs didn't go to the series because that ball was caught by the fan. That's the type of anger I felt. But you know something? That burrito was the reason that I found out who it was.
22:06 Speaker 03 Well, I was looking at the container that had the burrito. And within the burrito was a spork.
22:13 Dan Pashman? So you see the spork that wasn't there before.
22:15 Speaker 03 Right.
22:15 Dan Pashman? What's your first thought?
22:17 Speaker 03 My first thought was lipstick. There was lipstick on the spork. Yeah, it was neon orange. It was a very unique color. I knew right away. I mean, it was just like a light bulb went off in my head and all I saw was red. I mean, the anger. And the worst part is like, I had no run ins with this person. I really had no idea. Like, I couldn't tell you anything about this person besides that they wore that lipstick.
22:50 Dan Pashman? We'll call this woman Karen. That's not a real name. Heather says they hardly knew each other. They didn't work closely together. Outside of the neon orange lipstick, Karen was totally unremarkable. She blended in, although maybe that was part of her cover.
23:04 Speaker 03 And so I'm holding the box with the burrito in it and the spork is in my hand. And like, out of nowhere, I see Karen walk by. And she's going towards the restroom. And I just, I lost it.
23:23 Dan Pashman? Heather followed Karen into the bathroom, burrito and spork in hand. Karen was in a stall.
23:28 Speaker 03 I started banging on the door and just like, I need to talk to you. And I remember like, a voice very calm saying, can we talk some other time? And I was like, what the hell? Another time? No, this is the time. This is the place. We're doing this right now.
23:48 Dan Pashman? Heather stood there waiting with her burrito for what felt like an eternity.
23:51 Speaker 03 I'm gonna get the truth out of her. She's gonna admit that she's my burrito thief. She's gonna admit all the atrocities that she's done to all my food. And that's all I was thinking. And I just remember sitting there staring at that stall door, like, why won't she come out? Like, hurry up? And that's when I heard, like, the crumbling sound, the crunching sound of food wrapper in the stall. She was eating in there.
24:21 Dan Pashman? Wow.
24:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:25 Speaker 03 And that kinda for a second like broke my crazy seeing red anger. Cause like, what the hell, you know? And she finally did come out of the bathroom stall and there was food on her shirt. Like she was like brushing off crumbs on her shirt. And well, I kept on saying like, why? Well, you know, why me? And I remember saying, why me? And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, that is so, you know, ridiculous and pitiful to say that. But that's how I felt. And she just went to the sink, washed her hands and she turned around and looked at me.
25:06 Speaker 03 And she's just very calmly said, a person who doesn't finish a personal pizza doesn't deserve to have that pizza.
25:22 Speaker 03 Oh, chills. Still till this day.
25:27 Dan Pashman? For many, many minutes, we tried to contact Karen to tell her we were doing this story and in hopes that she might want to talk to us. In my 20 plus days of reporting, I've never tried harder to find anyone. Phone calls, social media, letters in English and Korean, even though I don't think Karen speaks Korean. Two private detectives, people knocking on doors in three different states. I even wrote her a note by cutting out words from magazines and taping them to a piece of paper to form sentences, then signing it in blood. You know, all the tricks you learn in journalism school. We never heard back from her. My best guess is that she wants to know part of this, which I respect. As for Heather, she hasn't trusted a communal fridge since. She never reported Karen to HR. They never spoke again.
26:10 Speaker 03 It was like my private, secret torture that I kept to myself. I was shameful. I didn't want other people to know.
26:19 Dan Pashman? But in a way, it was almost maybe perhaps it might've also been like her torture for her. Cause it's like now she has this sort of. This guillotine over her head, like she knows that you have this incriminating information on her that you're holding on to and holding on to.
26:34 Speaker 03 You know, I never thought about it that way. I was so self-absorbed at the time. I was just thinking about me, me, me, like, you know, how am I going to handle this? You know, what am I thinking about this?
26:45 Dan Pashman? You know, it's possible, Heather, that you had the best revenge by never doing anything. Even to this day, you lie awake thinking about her saying, "Why? Why?" But she could lie awake thinking about you. "What if she finds me on Facebook? What if we end up working in the same company or in the same town and what if I see her on the street? What if she reports it to my current boss?"
27:07 Speaker 03 Exactly. Because I'm always holding the other shoe for her.
27:10 Dan Pashman? That's right. All you got to do is drop it.
27:13 Speaker 03 Mind blown. Never thought about it that way. But now, now I feel like, you know, I have the upper hand. But I will drink her milkshake.
27:30 Dan Pashman? This episode was originally produced by Anne Sandy and me with editorial help from Chris Bannon and Leetam Malad. The serial theme song was composed by Nick Thorburn. This update was produced by Andres O'Hara and mixed by Jared O'Connell. Our team also includes Emma Morgenstern, Johanna Mayer, and Tracy Samuelson. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Eric Eddings. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
27:54 Speaker 03 And I'm Noni from New York City, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
28:19 Dan Pashman? This reheat was produced by
28:21 Speaker 06 Anna Palmer.
28:22 Dan Pashman? The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer.
28:26 Speaker 06 Emma Morgenstern.
28:27 Dan Pashman? And senior producer.
28:28 Speaker 01 Andres O'Hara.
28:29 Dan Pashman? Our engineer is. Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the Sirius XM app? Yes, the Sirius XM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the Sirius XM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
29:12 Speaker 01 Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper. So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app. At participating McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper, 7-Up Inc. Hattie Day presents, in the red corner, the undisputed, undefeated Weed Whacker Guy. Champion of hurling grass and pollen everywhere. And in the blue corner, the challenger, extra strength, Hattie Day.
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