Drug Emporium

When Bradlees department store at Roosevelt Boulevard and Red Lion Road closed three months ago, there was hardly a dry eye in the house. Businessmen in the area, who took the closing as a decidedly bad omen, quickly lost the enthusiasm engendered by Christmas. Surrounded by yellowing poinsettias and an aura of gloom and doom, they plotted ways to reduce inventory and workforce - in anticipation of the coming of the worst. Somehow, the crisis they feared didn't materialize.

A Montgomery County judge who sentenced two sons of Eagles coach Andy Reid to jail yesterday described the Reid house as a "drug emporium" and directly rebuked both parents, saying, "I have some real difficulty with the structure in which these two boys live. " Reid and his wife, Tammy, showed little emotion as Judge Steven T. O'Neill sentenced Garrett and Britt Reid to jail - for up to 23 months - in a six-hour session and capped months of drama for the family and, by extension, the Eagles organization.

Construction for St. Davids Square retail complex is on schedule. The stores will open on the site of the former B. Altman's at 550 E. Lancaster Ave. in Radnor Township. Genuardi's supermarket, Drug Emporium, T J Maxx, Filene's Basement, Micro Center and Party Palace already have signed long-term leases with the developer. Two more tenants are being sought.

Twice in the last two weeks, late-night thieves broke into drugstores in the Philadelphia area and tried to smash open the automatic teller machines inside. Each time, the culprits tripped store alarms, leaving them little time to pry the cash free. On Sunday night, thieves tried a smarter gambit. This time, they didn't bother trying to crack open the ATMs. They carried off the entire machines after breaking into stores in South Philadelphia and Oxford Circle in the Northeast. The first successful burglary that night came shortly before 11:30 p.m., police said, when at least two thieves removed the front-door lock of the Drug Emporium at 24th Street and Oregon Avenue in South Philadelphia and went to work on the free-standing ATM. The thieves battered open the steel-plated pedestal on which the ATM was mounted.

ATM machines are starting to attract the attention of burglars. Thieves struck three Drug Emporiums in four hours late Sunday and early yesterday, absconding with two ATM's and abandoning a third after a burglar alarm went off. Police said this was a "new and unusual" crime and turned it over to the Major Crimes Division. 'It's too early to tell if they're connected but if I were a betting man, I'd bet they were connected," said one detective, who asked not to be identified.

When Drug Emporium Inc. executives met stock analysts this week in Cherry Hill, they needed a good explanation for the discount drugstore chain's sluggish performance and a convincing strategy to turn it around. The stock analysts no doubt were skeptical, because the last several times the executives came up with a plan, it failed. The meeting was closed to the public, but company executives went armed with a plan that involves centralizing control of the chain's 224 stores in 26 states and installing a computer system to solve the company's inventory- control problems.

Three tenants are expected to begin moving into the former B. Altman Co. building in Radnor Township by early July after a cleanup of interior furnishings, a spokesman for the New York developer said yesterday. Jeffrey N. Gordon, who is a spokesman for KMO-361 Realty Associates of New York City, said workers were two weeks away from removing the last of the old fixtures and debris from the former department store. His employees then will replace wiring, repair the roof and erect a loading dock before the tenants set up. Gordon said three tenants - Genuardi's Supermarket, T J Maxx and Drug Emporium - have already signed long-term leases of 15 to 20 years and beyond, Gordon said.

You probably wouldn't call Leonard Townsend a career criminal, if for no other reason than nobody could make a living off what he stole. A shopping cart full of diapers here. A caseful of pain relievers there. But over the course of his adult life, Townsend has been arrested at least 19 times on charges of shoplifting. On Thursday, Townsend agreed to plead guilty to three counts of retail theft stemming from incidents that took place in Montgomery County between 1991 and this year.

Two Philadelphia men have been charged with attempted homicide and related charges for their alleged roles in a botched holdup at an Upper Darby drugstore Friday night. A security guard and a bystander were wounded during the attempt. Fred Moultrie, 50, and Carl Wilson, 48, were held on $50,000 cash bail each. The security guard was in serious condition yesterday with chest wounds at Hahnemann University Hospital. The female bystander, who was shot in the hand, was treated and released Friday night.

Leonard Garner, who police say has stolen tens of thousands of dollars by writing bad checks, has been charged with six counts of forgery. Garner, 38, who has been behind county prison bars since his arrest Feb. 14, was arraigned Friday before District Justice Ester Casillo on charges brought by East Norriton and Jenkintown police. He was returned to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility after failing to post $20,000 cash bail, raising his total bail to $31,500. He has not yet arranged legal representation.

Garrett Reid was charged yesterday with smuggling a variety of prescription pills into the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, and his cellmate told detectives that Reid had confided that he "didn't want to go through what [he] did last time. " The inmate said Reid ingested some of the pills - and even offered him some. "He was not going to be in prison without his drugs," Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. said of Reid at a news conference in Norristown.

A day after missing practice for the first time in his nine seasons as the Eagles' head coach, Andy Reid ended his silence on the legal problems facing his two oldest sons, Garrett and Britt Reid. The elder Reid, who returned to practice yesterday after attending the brothers' sentencing on Thursday, began his news conference with a statement before circumventing subsequent questions. "I know this is a big story for everybody, and I respect that," Reid said before a gathering that was larger than usual for a Friday.

A Montgomery County judge who sentenced two sons of Eagles coach Andy Reid to jail yesterday described the Reid house as a "drug emporium" and directly rebuked both parents, saying, "I have some real difficulty with the structure in which these two boys live. " Reid and his wife, Tammy, showed little emotion as Judge Steven T. O'Neill sentenced Garrett and Britt Reid to jail - for up to 23 months - in a six-hour session and capped months of drama for the family and, by extension, the Eagles organization.

ANDY REID'S face grew increasingly red. The Eagles head coach, known for his sternness with players, was obviously not used to being dressed down, at least not in such a public forum. Yet there he sat yesterday, alongside his wife, Tammy, in a Montgomery County courtroom with his cheeks aflame as a judge rebuked their parenting after their two eldest sons were nabbed for separate gun-and- drug-related crimes on the same January day. "I have some real difficulty with the structure in which these two boys live," Common Pleas Judge Steven T. O'Neill said.

Teenagers in the township battle a common and insidious enemy known to their cohorts in suburbs and hamlets across the nation. Boredom. It strikes on Friday and Saturday nights and leaves its young victims scratching their heads and complaining that "there's nothing to do around here. " Yet these teens persevere, seeking out common ground and creating cliques in the most unusual of places. "Me and my friends chill at the Drug Emporium - or where the Drug Emporium used to be - and at McDonald's," said Angelina Staffieri, 16. "We just chill out. " Her friend Danielle Mendenhall summed up her usual evening activities by pointing at Staffieri and saying: "I chill with her. " In this sprawling township, where there is no downtown and life revolves around strip malls on high-speed roads, teens have adopted retail parking lots as their gathering places, often giving them ironic names like "Club Mickey D's" for the McDonald's.

Two Philadelphia men have been charged with attempted homicide and related charges for their alleged roles in a botched holdup at an Upper Darby drugstore Friday night. A security guard and a bystander were wounded during the attempt. Fred Moultrie, 50, and Carl Wilson, 48, were held on $50,000 cash bail each. The security guard was in serious condition yesterday with chest wounds at Hahnemann University Hospital. The female bystander, who was shot in the hand, was treated and released Friday night.

A facelift is in store for the shabby storefronts and massive parking lot at the 24-year-old Montgomery Commons shopping center on Welsh Road. The Board of Supervisors has approved a redevelopment plan submitted by Pennmark Management Co., which includes a new, 103,000-square-foot Kmart store. "It's a shot in the arm" for the center, Supervisors Chairman Stephen Prousi said. "The redevelopment stage has been long overdue. It's an eyesore. " Under an agreement reached after more than two years of negotiations, the Kmart will be placed on the west side of the shopping center, where a Drug Emporium and a U.S. Toy store are currently located.

Dire circumstances brought Kathryn and Homer Piroeff to Radnor Crossing Apartments. A fire destroyed their Main Line home in March, and they were forced to find a rental unit to occupy while the house was being rebuilt. The Piroeffs say they're more than pleased with things at the complex, located in St. Davids. "I feel blessed that we were able to find this place," Kathryn Piroeff said. "I can't say anything but good things about Radnor Crossing. " Those sentiments were fostered when the Piroeffs contacted the complex's staff just after the blaze.

The Rev. Msgr. Frederick J. Stevenson, pastor emeritus of St. John Chrysostom Church in Wallingford and former principal of Cardinal Dougherty High School, died of heart failure Sunday. He was 86. Stevenson was pastor of St. John Chrysostom Church from 1967 until he was named pastor emeritus in 1991. He was principal at Cardinal Dougherty from 1960 to 1962. Stevenson was named an honorary prelate in 1962 by Pope John XXIII. Born in Philadelphia, Stevenson graduated from Northeast Catholic High School before attending St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook.