CRIME: An Orange County venture tests a device that keeps grocery-store carts turning in circles if they're removed from the premises.

YORBA LINDA -- A new shopping-cart anti-theft device could leave carts turning circles and save millions of dollars for the retail industry. It's a shopping cart that looks, feels and pushes like other ones, but leaves shoppers turning circles if they try to removes the car from the Wilmington Albertson's where it is being tested.
The device, created by Yorba Linda-based MiND WURX^®, prompts the front wheels to rise like an airplane's landing gear, lowering the front end of the cart about € of an inch onto two angled wheels. The fixed wheels only go in a circle.
The UnCart™, as it is called, is still in the testing phase at the supermarket, but so far only one cart has disappeared during 80 days of testing, said Judie Decker, spokeswoman for Boise, Idaho-based Albertson's. The chain is considering purchasing the system.

Shopping cart theft is a nagging problem, said Dave Heylen, spokesman for the California Grocers Association.
``This is a major concern for retailers,'' Heylen said. ``There is the cost of the cart, retrieving it and replacing it and the reflection (that having its ) carts all over the community has on the store.''
Shopping cart theft costs the retail industry more than $800 million a year, said George Chaves, senior regional investigator for California Cart Retrieval Corp. The industry organization that retrieves thousands of carts a week from San Diego to Santa Barbara for the major chain stores and a few cities that contract with the group.
According to MiND WURX^® partner James Prather, the Wilmington store was losing 60 to 90 carts a day.
Before the test began, MiND WURX^® buried cable around the perimeter of the parking lot. The cable electronically signals the ``landing gear'' if the cart is being removed.
``This has been extremely successful,'' Decker said. ``In each of our stores we have cart retrieval services, where companies go out in the neighborhood collecting carts. This (UnCart™) has the potential for eliminating that need." Over the years there have been many attempts to solve the problem. Solutions have ranged from depositing a quarter to get a cart and then getting the coin returned when the cart is returned to the installation of wheel-lock devices and concrete posts that kept shopping carts in.
Others, like Ralphs and local Jax Market owner Bill MacAloney, created a shuttle service to cut down on theft.

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