3c hapter - Index of

106 Locavesting
including the former site of Mills End, a Western- wear shop that,
like the bakery, had served residents for generations. “We said, boy,
if we could get all of the boys in the department to pitch in, we
could probably save the bakery,” recalls Rynearson.
The offi cers called the owner of the bakery and asked for
a price. She thought they were crazy—it wasn’t the kind of business
that’s going to make anyone rich, but gave them a fi gure.
Scribbling on the pizza box that held their congealing lunch,
they worked out the numbers. And that was how the entire ninemember
Clare police force came to own a bakery.
The new owners put up a fresh coat of paint, hung some police
memorabilia, and tinkered with the bakery’s menu, swelling the size
of the cookies and adding “the squealer,” a maple- frosted doughnut
topped with two strips of bacon. Three weeks later, the new bakery—
rechristened Cops & Doughnuts—opened its doors. The plucky
cops and their doughnut shop quickly became a media sensation.
By August, business was so brisk, the cops expanded into an
adjacent historic building that had been empty. They used it to
house their growing line of merchandise, including t- shirts emblazoned
with slogans like ‘D.W.I.’ Doughnuts Were Involved and Don’t
Glaze Me Bro. There are also coffee mugs and a new line of Copsbranded
coffee in blends such as Midnight Shift and Off Duty
Decaf. Who thinks up these clever gimmicks? “We’ve all worked
the midnight shift at one time or another,” explains Rynearson,
who is partial to the bakery’s oatmeal raisin cookie. “In small- town
America, you get time to drive around and think about things,
and you come up with stuff.”
The cops clearly relish their new roles as protectors of the carbohydrates.
They can usually be found at the shop on their days
off, chatting with customers and pitching in. Sometimes there is
intrigue, as when Rynearson, while removing some old trim in the
prep room, discovered a smattering of dried blood. Sure that he
had stumbled onto a “cold case”—after all, Clare was a hangout
for the notorious bootleggers known as the Purple Gang in the
1920s—he excitedly called in the department’s crime investigator,
Dave Saad, only to fi nd that the blood was, in fact, raspberry fi lling.
The seeds, noted Saad, should have been a dead giveaway.