Three Arrested After Gold Chain Theft at Rocky Point Jewelry Store

Gold chains are the sort of jewelry that can disappear in seconds, and that speed was on display at R&S Diamond Exchange in Rocky Point, where Suffolk County police said three people stole three chains on Saturday afternoon around 2 p.m. The reported theft, at the shop on Route 25A, turned into a fast-moving case with a familiar jewelry-store logic: small, high-value pieces that are easy to lift, easy to conceal and easy to move on.

Police said the suspects were later in custody. Local reporting identified them as Donna Logan, 65, of Ronkonkoma; Jemel Edwards, 39, of Deer Park; and Elizabeth Linder, 34. The charges reported in the case included grand larceny in the third degree and grand larceny in the fourth degree, a distinction that matters because New York law treats the value of the stolen property as the dividing line, and third-degree grand larceny applies when the property exceeds $3,000.

That threshold helps explain why chain theft remains such an enduring threat in jewelry retail. Chains are compact, instantly recognizable, and easy to convert into cash through secondary markets where a buyer may care more about weight and metal content than about design or provenance. A rope chain, a curb link or a delicate box chain can all be stripped of their retail identity in a way that a larger, more distinctive piece cannot. For a store, that means the loss is rarely just the gold itself. It is the margin, the inventory interruption and the breach of trust, all compressed into one quick moment.

R&S Diamond Exchange carries an added layer of local significance. The business says it has been family owned and operated in Rocky Point since 1980, which makes a small, brazen theft feel bigger than the number of chains taken. In a store like that, the handling of chain jewelry is likely to remain a delicate ritual: pieces shown one at a time, trays kept close, staff watching hands as carefully as faces. For buyers, that means more frequent requests to keep jewelry on the counter, to limit touching, or to ask staff to open cases rather than pass items around. The new reality in many chain departments is simple. The less time a necklace spends exposed, the less opportunity there is for a grab-and-run to become a grand larceny case.