She says Ruben refused to carry toys thatpromoted violence in any way and often carriedbetter quality toys than those in other stores.

"He made space in his store for a lot ofcreative and aesthetically pleasing things,"Roberts says.

She says Ruben was generous with discounts forquantity buyers like her school, giving store giftcertificates worth 20 percent of each purchase.

Yet she says it was not Ruben's generosity thatwas his downfall.

She blames theft, but says the amount involvedin this case could not have occurred throughsimple everyday theft, even if it were as seriousas that at Grolier.

Roberts says she and many others, includingRuben himself, attribute the theft to someone whohad after-hours access to the store, possibly anemployee.

Ruben was unavailable for comment for thisstory.

Regardless of who is to blame for the problem,Cambridge stores are facing an ultimatum: shape upor ship out.

Taking a Bite out of Crime

Tower Records and the Coop are two stores thathave beefed up their security systems afternoticing the tremendous amounts of inventory lostto thieves each year.

The Harvard Coop suffered a three percent lossrate in 1998, which means losses made up threepercent of the store's gross sales. Thattranslates to a loss of $3.75 million.

Carl W. Pilgrim, a Coop loss prevention agentand store detective, says the store's percentageloss has been steadily decreasing since it hit ahigh of seven percent in the mid-80s.

Pilgrim credits the improvement to the store'srevamped loss-prevention system.

It is rare to find him in his office as he wason a recent Thursday evening, sitting amid thefile cabinets containing folders on every offendercaught at the Coop from 1992 on.

Instead, Pilgrim is usually out roving thestore in plainclothes, looking for thieves, bothyoung and old, who are trying to evade him.